I really don’t like WotC’s decision to remove racial alignments from the Player’s Handbook. That stuff was a big part of D&D lore and gave characters and races built-in personality and moral tension. Taking it out flattens the world and makes the game feel less interesting. This isn’t about fixing rules or improving the game: it’s moral policing imposed on a private imaginative space, altering fictional content for the sake of perceived offense. Now players are basically ceding narrative authority to the sensitivities of others instead of being able to explore classic archetypes and stories freely.
It also makes storytelling harder. DMs and players now have to invent all the moral cues and archetypes themselves, which slows down worldbuilding, especially for newer players. At the same time, it severs a connection to decades of D&D tradition and mythic storytelling, which a lot of us grew up with and still value. And honestly, once you start changing stuff just to avoid offense, it sets a slippery slope.what’s next? It just reduces creative freedom over time.
Long time fans are the ones paying for WotC to play it safe.
Being offended doesn’t automatically make someone right. Fictional worlds are supposed to challenge you and let you experiment safely, but now the game feels neutered and less creative. Nothing stops people from restoring the old archetypes at their table, sure, but having to do extra work for something that used to be default just makes the game feel weaker. Overall, it’s intrusive, unnecessary, and just makes D&D feel less rich and fun.
Hard disagree. I suspect the lens you're looking at this through has given you some misapprehensions. Which is likely why you contradicted yourself repeatedly but probably didn't realize it.
Removing alignments from monster types based on playable races makes them less flat. It adds nuance and complexity to encounter building and storytelling. You said so yourself in your second paragraph. Though to be a pedant, the DMs don't have to invent anything from whole cloth; alignment still exists, it's just not lazily painted all over with an excessively large brush. I doubt that it's actually going to slow down many seasoned DMs, as most of us likely already have ideas on how we want to use dime-a-dozen monsters and most of us already have loads and loads of ideas on complex, nuanced monsters, boss monsters, and campaign-length villains. But being free to do more work customizing and characterizing enemy characters embodies having more creative freedom, not less. Novice DMs can get all the characterization they need running official published modules and adventures and encounters from places like DMsGuild while they learn the ropes and build up their creative confidence.
And I hold with Rear Admiral "Amazing Grace" Hopper, who said "'we''ve always done it that way' are the most dangerous words in the English language." You're going to have to put in some effort to defend your unjustified assumption that changing something is bad just because it's old. I've seen lots and lots of changes since I started playing with AD&D 2E. None of those changes have "ruined" the game the way the nay-sayers and rage baiters (and increasingly, YouTubers posting inflammatory content just to drum up views) would have us believe.
It is interesting that you say "being offended doesn't automatically make someone right." Could you maybe find room in your worldview for taking that statement and applying it to the offense you've taken at the game being updated? I've long said that often when we don't like something we say "this thing is bad and no one should like it" when what we should really be saying is "my personal take is that I didn't like it, but that doesn't have any bearing on its quality."
Let us quickly deal with the elephant in the room. Fixed alignments for species were intentionally added to the game in furtherance of racism. Gart Gygax bragged about being pro-genocide and pro-eugenics, and his abject disdain for any culture other than his idealized view of white European culture. He then took those views on genetics dictating cultural supremacy and baked it into the game.
The removal of these hard baked alignments is not mere “moral coding” - it is removing an element of the game added by a bigoted eugenicist that was intentionally added to the game to promote racism. That is an unfortunate fact about the game’s history, but it is a fact. This is not really something I think anyone really wants to discuss in great detail, but “we felt we had to remove intentional racism” is a necessary backdrop to the conversation and understanding why Wizards had very little choice in removing these elements from the game.
Of course, there are certain parts of the player base who ignore that fact for one reason or another, often wrapping their complaints in the guise that it “makes the game less interesting.”
However, throughout the game’s history, forced alignments have been a documented stifle on creativity. Gatekeeping players or DMs refusing to allow players/NPCs who break their default. Planes like Eberron or countless homebrew worlds that try to do different things with their species… held back by “but RAW says this group HAS to be evil.”
Removal of these strict alignments in the default book frees up creativity for players, rather than hinders it. It removes a default in the base rules that has caused problems, while still allowing players and DMs to apply stricter rules in their homerule. That is just common sense game design - it is generally easier to go from a flexible default to a more limiting one, than to go the other direction.
I really don’t like WotC’s decision to remove racial alignments from the Player’s Handbook. That stuff was a big part of D&D lore and gave characters and races built-in personality and moral tension. Taking it out flattens the world and makes the game feel less interesting. This isn’t about fixing rules or improving the game: it’s moral policing imposed on a private imaginative space, altering fictional content for the sake of perceived offense. Now players are basically ceding narrative authority to the sensitivities of others instead of being able to explore classic archetypes and stories freely.
It also makes storytelling harder. DMs and players now have to invent all the moral cues and archetypes themselves, which slows down worldbuilding, especially for newer players. At the same time, it severs a connection to decades of D&D tradition and mythic storytelling, which a lot of us grew up with and still value. And honestly, once you start changing stuff just to avoid offense, it sets a slippery slope.what’s next? It just reduces creative freedom over time.
Long time fans are the ones paying for WotC to play it safe.
Being offended doesn’t automatically make someone right. Fictional worlds are supposed to challenge you and let you experiment safely, but now the game feels neutered and less creative. Nothing stops people from restoring the old archetypes at their table, sure, but having to do extra work for something that used to be default just makes the game feel weaker. Overall, it’s intrusive, unnecessary, and just makes D&D feel less rich and fun.
There's a lot to unpack here, so lets go step-by-step.
I really don’t like WotC’s decision to remove racial alignments from the Player’s Handbook. That stuff was a big part of D&D lore and gave characters and races built-in personality and moral tension. Taking it out flattens the world and makes the game feel less interesting. This isn’t about fixing rules or improving the game: it’s moral policing imposed on a private imaginative space, altering fictional content for the sake of perceived offense. Now players are basically ceding narrative authority to the sensitivities of others instead of being able to explore classic archetypes and stories freely.
I don't really see how this is true. When you DM the game, it can be whatever you and your players want it to be. WotC changing something like not having all goblins be stated to be evil in their stat block does not mean you can't DM a game in which all goblins are evil. You absolutely can. You have narrative authority over your games. If you are playing in someone else's game and they don't subscribe to "all goblins are evil" and your character starts slaughtering goblins for no reason, yeah there will probably be in-game repercussions, but that will happen in any game when you are not interacting with the game world in good faith.
It also makes storytelling harder. DMs and players now have to invent all the moral cues and archetypes themselves, which slows down worldbuilding, especially for newer players. At the same time, it severs a connection to decades of D&D tradition and mythic storytelling, which a lot of us grew up with and still value. And honestly, once you start changing stuff just to avoid offense, it sets a slippery slope. What’s next? It just reduces creative freedom over time.
This argument doesn't really work for me for two reasons. The first is that when you say "It makes storytelling harder because now DMs have to explain why these characters are bad/evil/worth killing instead of just being part of an evil race you can kill for fun," that just sounds like being a lazy DM. It does not make storytelling harder to say "this group of bandits has been terrorizing the towns nearby" rather than just "you encounter a pack of goblins. Roll for initiative". In fact, in the "pack of goblins" example, there is not storytelling. You aren't interacting with the world or the story or the lore, you're simply reducing NPC HP from 25 to 0. Yay? If that is the type of game you want to play or DM, that is absolutely fine, have your fun. But for me as a DM creating story and plot and hooks that engage the players in the world is more fun for my table than simply battling stat blocks for no real reason.
The second part is, if you're saying it disconnects you from decades of D&D storytelling: no it does not. You can still build and play in worlds that follow that same worldbuilding of "this race is all evil because reasons". No one can stop you. WotC is not going to come to your house and make you change your NPCs from "Evil" to "Good". All the lore, all the mythology, everything you grew up with is still there, exactly as it was before 5e 2024, or even 5e. Nothing has to change for you and how you play the game, unless you are playing in games where the DM does not subscribe to the "all goblins are evil" trope, but that could have happened in 2nd Edition just as easily as 5e.
Being offended doesn’t automatically make someone right. Fictional worlds are supposed to challenge you and let you experiment safely, but now the game feels neutered and less creative. Nothing stops people from restoring the old archetypes at their table, sure, but having to do extra work for something that used to be default just makes the game feel weaker. Overall, it’s intrusive, unnecessary, and just makes D&D feel less rich and fun.
"Fictional worlds are supposed to challenge you" you say, however you seemingly want to play in a world where you can classify an entire race/species as "evil" to just wantonly kill them without moral issues or in-game repercussions. That is kind of the opposite of challenging you. It is just setting the stage for mindless violence. Again, you can absolutely play how you want at your table, and can build your worlds how you want them, but for MY games that I DM, I really prefer to craft stories that are of interest to my players, and none of my players would be happy with a campaign where they simply murder folks of a particular species because "goblins bad".
I'm also not really sure how it is extra work on the part of anyone in your campaign to have entire races/species be evil. Because it isn't in the stat block? You can really just simply as the DM say the words "All Goblins are evil in my world" and that's that. If you have new players at the table who aren't familiar with decades of lore where all goblins are meant to be cut down mindlessly, you can simply say "Your character spots a pack of goblins in the distance. They would know that goblins were created by the Goddess Grumoli to spread hate and chaos in the world. They are divinely driven to have no moral compass and cannot be redeemed." Boom, little bit of world knowledge and now all goblins are set to meet the sharp end of that player character's blade.
At any rate, the game has always been as fun as you, your DM, and the other players make it. Nothing WotC puts in the lore or takes out changed the fact that it is up to your table to make it fun. You never have to adhere to WotC lore. This is a game about creativity, and eliminating hard "rules" for worldbuilding, such as "all goblins are evil", doesn't stifle creativity, it supports it. You get to make the world, your character, your story how you want it. I think WotC reducing restrictions like that makes it a more creative and fun place to play in.
Alignment has had issues since it was created. This change makes things much easier and opens up the door for each DM to make their world and story unique.
"In my setting the dwarves of EverRock Mountain tend to be chaotic evil on the average. There's a ton of variety but their culture celebrates the individual and avarice."
I explain it that way in my game and never tell players they are forced to use an alignment.
Problem solved!
Doing it different? Problem solved! :) Exceptions land at every table and this is really no different than when 2e AD&D took away Demons and Devils as a label. They were still Demons and Devils at my table and nothing broke.
Just a suggestion here, which I have considered myself for different reasons: Go play the edition you prefer. The game that existed when you fell in love with it is still easily accessible and plenty of players are out there looking for an old school experience.
As far as "ruining a great game", that's a ridiculous supposition. In order for the game to grow it HAS to appeal to the modern YOUNGER players, not grognards like me (and you from the sound of it). They may make mistakes or take the wrong direction, but idly sitting by and trying to push a system that doesn't align with the viewpoints of potential new players would be a far worse mistake for them.
The game that existed when you fell in love with it is still easily accessible and plenty of players are out there looking for an old school experience.
Is it? How do you even begin to find older edition decades out of print stuff and rules help et.al. and even harder, how do you find players.
The game that existed when you fell in love with it is still easily accessible and plenty of players are out there looking for an old school experience.
Is it? How do you even begin to find older edition decades out of print stuff and rules help et.al. and even harder, how do you find players.
The DMs Guild. They have the vast majority of books from previous editions as PDFs you can purchase from WotC
1: The Core rulebooks for 2024 are pretty setting agnostic. This means that newer DMs have more freedom to sculpt their own lore when it comes to their worlds. People have been running Non Evil tieflings and Orcs since 3.5, even when the books said otherwise.
1.5: I don't think Racial alignment has been in the PHB for a long LONG time. Classes like Paladin and Cleric had aligment and racial requirements when i started in the 90's but i don't remember races having it.
2: The change has been happening for a long time. Goblins on Ravnica were never evil, just tended towards chaotic and passionate behavior. Removing alignments from races opens up more player options, and supports point one in making that call more setting specific. In the realms, Lloth worshiping Drow will still be pretty Evil, while the Drow of Imberlur who don't worship Lloth, are mostly good. (Yes, good Drow existed for decades, not just Drizzt.)
3: How does removing restrictions " Reduce Creatives freedom over time"? How does that make sense.
4: I am a longtime fan, i have been playing since the 90's and i am not "Paying for it" don't project your feelings on to all 'longtime fans.' Also, back at ya. You being offended doesn't automatically make you right either.
5: You are free to still make Races evil. You have that power at your table. You always did. That hasn't been removed from you.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Racial alignments not only never made sense, they triple-quadruple never made sense for Player Characters (PCs), who are often outliers even in the in-universe D&D communities they originated from.
If you walked up to someone on the street and asked them what they do for a living and they replied "I'm an adventurer!" you'd probably look at them like they're drunk or crazy. It's not the kind of profession most people in a world sign up to do - and an even smaller percentage of those possess the talents, training, and spark of destiny to even survive it, let alone be any good. In the Heroic Fantasy genre (D&D's default, DMG 133), the characters we play are an extraordinary fraction of a fraction of the overall population even at level 1.
In other words - even if a statement like "Halflings are typically Chaotic Good" was something it made a lick of sense to try generalizing across even a single setting, never mind the core books of the game as a whole, it would still be an utterly irrelevant data point for a player making their exceptional Halfling adventurer. And that's the best case scenario, before even starting to unpack all the decades of ugliness from the game's roots being pointed out by posters like Caerwyn that give us a very good reason not to regress in this regard.
TL;DR 5e moving away from racial alignments makes perfect sense, and should have happened long ago.
Taking it out flattens the world and makes the game feel less interesting.
"All Orcs are evil and all Elves are good" being interesting vs "every person in this world is an individual shaped by their own experiences and mind that can continue and grow, change, and deviate from stereotypes" being flat is a heck of a take.
If you like ....... orcs can still be enemies of mankind and everyone with good (as defined by us) in their hearts - but for all manner of reasons, not just because orcs are evil.
Also, what does it mean to be evil? What, exactly, is it evil people support? The concept of evil? Oppression may be evil, but it's exceedingly rare for the oppressed to support oppression. Also, in the real world humans invented oppression, not orcs. So there's scant reason to feel that ... if the Grand Banner of Oppression was hoisted, those that flocked to it would mostly be orcs.
Anyways. Come up with a reason why orcs and humans fight. Why does it have to be some basic difference in psychology that makes orcs want to do evil stuff for no apparent reason. For that matter, do we really imagine humans doing good for no reason? I feel like the vast majority of everyone goes around being effectively neutral basically all the time.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
It's your game, do whatever you like. Omitting a 'fixed alignment' opens up more storytelling opportunities. However, there's a key concept you're missing, that was mentioned by Justice in an interview.
The Core Rules have to apply to every world, not just the ones you know like the Forgotten Realms.
This was in discussion about why the Drow aren't inherently evil in the Monster Manual. However, they will be explicitly evil aligned in the Forgotten Realms as per the new guides coming out, because of the relationship with Llolth.
Another example is that the Orcs of Eberron are not inherently evil, because they are not in contact with Gruumsh. They are more often Neutral or Good depending on the tribe, especially the ones taught Druidism by a dragon.
The Core Rules have to apply to every world and therefore they cannot have specific restrictions if those restrictions don't apply to every world. This has nothing to do with your politics and everything to do with ensuring that the creativity of Dungeon Masters around the world are not constrained by specific restrictions that already do not apply to every official setting.
Not everthing is your "War on Woke". It has nothing to with people being offended. It is a requirement of their need to apply to all settings.
FR Drow will be evil. Feel free to hate on the "dark skinned elf" in peace.
While I don't care much about alignment, I do think it's a shame that all the species have become so bland and generic. A trend that I think really started with MPMM. The 2014 PHB included a comment about how it can be fun to play against type. That is no longer possible in 2024, since there is no type to begin with, everything is just a blank slate.
You could argue that this new approach lets people customize things more, but that was already possible before. Nothing in the rules prevented you from reflavoring stuff in your game. On the other hand, if you don't have a clear picture of what you want, or encyclopedic knowledge of lore from past books, then making a backstory for your character has become more cumbersome.
What I wish they'd done is to present some sort of default characteristics and history for different species while stressing that it's perfectly fine to do things differently if that's what you want.
I really don’t like WotC’s decision to remove racial alignments from the Player’s Handbook. That stuff was a big part of D&D lore and gave characters and races built-in personality and moral tension. Taking it out flattens the world and makes the game feel less interesting. This isn’t about fixing rules or improving the game: it’s moral policing imposed on a private imaginative space, altering fictional content for the sake of perceived offense. Now players are basically ceding narrative authority to the sensitivities of others instead of being able to explore classic archetypes and stories freely.
It also makes storytelling harder. DMs and players now have to invent all the moral cues and archetypes themselves, which slows down worldbuilding, especially for newer players. At the same time, it severs a connection to decades of D&D tradition and mythic storytelling, which a lot of us grew up with and still value. And honestly, once you start changing stuff just to avoid offense, it sets a slippery slope.what’s next? It just reduces creative freedom over time.
Long time fans are the ones paying for WotC to play it safe.
Being offended doesn’t automatically make someone right. Fictional worlds are supposed to challenge you and let you experiment safely, but now the game feels neutered and less creative. Nothing stops people from restoring the old archetypes at their table, sure, but having to do extra work for something that used to be default just makes the game feel weaker. Overall, it’s intrusive, unnecessary, and just makes D&D feel less rich and fun.
Things change. Including lores, creature/character descriptions and creature classifications. I for one, never understand the race thing when I was first introduced to 1e. I only wish that Wotc had completely lock out all playable monsters, including the Ogre and Tiefling. But they would have had a rebellion on their hands led by the Youtube channel mafia.
As for the game, I don't see how it affects DM'ing negatively, unless you made up your mind you just don't like the changes. In which case, everyone is free to continue using 2014, for right now.
I for one like the changes, sadly the only thing that continues to try to ruin the game is the rules lawyers who go through rules claiming rules don't apply because "the rules don't specify". For example, someone was arguing that since taking the Hide Action successfully gives you the Invisibility condition, you could simply wrong around where ever you want because you are invisible. Why because Hide Action doesn't say you lose the condition if you leave the Heavily Obscured area or 3/4 cover. 🤦🏿
What I wish they'd done is to present some sort of default characteristics and history for different species while stressing that it's perfectly fine to do things differently if that's what you want.
While I understand that viewpoint, that is kind of hard to do when you dont refer to a default setting. I mean the history or characteristics for elven culture is a lot different depending on wether we are looking at Faerun or at Spelljammer. These things very much depend on the specific worlds and settings your looking at. Going with the multiverse approach kind of means you have to be more generic.
This was in discussion about why the Drow aren't inherently evil in the Monster Manual. However, they will be explicitly evil aligned in the Forgotten Realms as per the new guides coming out, because of the relationship with Llolth.
To be even clearer - all Lolthite Drow will be evil aligned in the FR book, just like all Githyanki who devote themselves to Vlaakith are evil. Even in FR however, not all Drow follow Lolth. There are neutral Drow like Jarlaxle, Seldarine Drow both on the surface and in the Underdark, and even pockets of resistance in Menzoberranzan itself, though the life expectancy of Drow taking such an approach is likely to be brief.
The important thing is that they're evil because of their actions/choices, not biology. If someone wants evil biology in D&D, that's what things like unplayable fiends and aberrations are for.
While I don't care much about alignment, I do think it's a shame that all the species have become so bland and generic. A trend that I think really started with MPMM. The 2014 PHB included a comment about how it can be fun to play against type. That is no longer possible in 2024, since there is no type to begin with, everything is just a blank slate.
You could argue that this new approach lets people customize things more, but that was already possible before. Nothing in the rules prevented you from reflavoring stuff in your game. On the other hand, if you don't have a clear picture of what you want, or encyclopedic knowledge of lore from past books, then making a backstory for your character has become more cumbersome.
What I wish they'd done is to present some sort of default characteristics and history for different species while stressing that it's perfectly fine to do things differently if that's what you want.
Why do "default characteristics" have to be tied to species though? Society makes far more sense for those themes. Even if you want the oh-so-original character concept of a chaotic good drow yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin, you can achieve that without saying all Drow everywhere are inherently evil - just have your character be a Menzoberranzan escapee specifically.
What I wish they'd done is to present some sort of default characteristics and history for different species while stressing that it's perfectly fine to do things differently if that's what you want.
The "default characteristics" of any species are still there—they're the species traits such as dragonborn breath weapon or aasimar's divine abilities. Beyond the purely physiological, why would any species have "default characteristics"? It simply doesn't make sense. A dwarf that grew up in a region of the world wracked with war and famine and political corruption is going to have different characteristics—philosophy, morals, outlook on life etc—than one that grew up in a prosperous dwarfholm. Hell, two elves that grew up in the same city could have vastly different characteristics based on what social strata they belonged to. The elf living a life of elitist luxury amongst the upper echelons of the city may be crueler, more capricious, and potentially more inclined to discrimination than the one that grew up on the streets, struggling to survive and learning to rely on those around them regardless of if they're a fellow elf, human, dwarf, or goblin. Family is family and that's worth more than gold.
The notion of sociological and psychological defaults based on mortal* nature (species) rather than nurture is patently absurd and the game betters itself the more it distances itself from the notion
*Supernature, immortal, and paranormal beings obviously do not fall under the same umbrella. A creature that has lived longer than a thousand civilizations, embodies a metaphysical concept such as law or evil, or exists more as a mantel than an individual is not going to have the same freedoms of existence as mortals.
Most creatures will develop at least some adaptive behaviors based on surroundings and upbringing (culture, climate, food and resource scarcity, etc.) hence animals or creatures that lack intellect can still be aggressive or peaceful, unpredictable or more stable in temperament or behavior even within the same species; obviously humanoid creatures are more complex by an order of magnitude. There is a ton of information online that can be found for free (and I don't mean pirated) that goes into great detail about creatures, monsters and humanoids from classic settings. So much so that it takes very little effort to find it. There is also, as mentioned above, DM's Guild for older sources you'd like to own or access offline.
Personally, I much prefer moral ambiguity (even in my big bads - the villain rarely thinks they're the bad guy) and complexity based on the things I mentioned above and on specifically who the characters are encountering. Just my humble opinion, but I think it makes story telling and role play more interesting and engaging than just, "there's a bad thing, lets kill it!"
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I really don’t like WotC’s decision to remove racial alignments from the Player’s Handbook. That stuff was a big part of D&D lore and gave characters and races built-in personality and moral tension. Taking it out flattens the world and makes the game feel less interesting. This isn’t about fixing rules or improving the game: it’s moral policing imposed on a private imaginative space, altering fictional content for the sake of perceived offense. Now players are basically ceding narrative authority to the sensitivities of others instead of being able to explore classic archetypes and stories freely.
It also makes storytelling harder. DMs and players now have to invent all the moral cues and archetypes themselves, which slows down worldbuilding, especially for newer players. At the same time, it severs a connection to decades of D&D tradition and mythic storytelling, which a lot of us grew up with and still value. And honestly, once you start changing stuff just to avoid offense, it sets a slippery slope.what’s next? It just reduces creative freedom over time.
Long time fans are the ones paying for WotC to play it safe.
Being offended doesn’t automatically make someone right. Fictional worlds are supposed to challenge you and let you experiment safely, but now the game feels neutered and less creative. Nothing stops people from restoring the old archetypes at their table, sure, but having to do extra work for something that used to be default just makes the game feel weaker. Overall, it’s intrusive, unnecessary, and just makes D&D feel less rich and fun.
Hard disagree. I suspect the lens you're looking at this through has given you some misapprehensions. Which is likely why you contradicted yourself repeatedly but probably didn't realize it.
Removing alignments from monster types based on playable races makes them less flat. It adds nuance and complexity to encounter building and storytelling. You said so yourself in your second paragraph. Though to be a pedant, the DMs don't have to invent anything from whole cloth; alignment still exists, it's just not lazily painted all over with an excessively large brush. I doubt that it's actually going to slow down many seasoned DMs, as most of us likely already have ideas on how we want to use dime-a-dozen monsters and most of us already have loads and loads of ideas on complex, nuanced monsters, boss monsters, and campaign-length villains. But being free to do more work customizing and characterizing enemy characters embodies having more creative freedom, not less. Novice DMs can get all the characterization they need running official published modules and adventures and encounters from places like DMsGuild while they learn the ropes and build up their creative confidence.
And I hold with Rear Admiral "Amazing Grace" Hopper, who said "'we''ve always done it that way' are the most dangerous words in the English language." You're going to have to put in some effort to defend your unjustified assumption that changing something is bad just because it's old. I've seen lots and lots of changes since I started playing with AD&D 2E. None of those changes have "ruined" the game the way the nay-sayers and rage baiters (and increasingly, YouTubers posting inflammatory content just to drum up views) would have us believe.
It is interesting that you say "being offended doesn't automatically make someone right." Could you maybe find room in your worldview for taking that statement and applying it to the offense you've taken at the game being updated? I've long said that often when we don't like something we say "this thing is bad and no one should like it" when what we should really be saying is "my personal take is that I didn't like it, but that doesn't have any bearing on its quality."
Let us quickly deal with the elephant in the room. Fixed alignments for species were intentionally added to the game in furtherance of racism. Gart Gygax bragged about being pro-genocide and pro-eugenics, and his abject disdain for any culture other than his idealized view of white European culture. He then took those views on genetics dictating cultural supremacy and baked it into the game.
The removal of these hard baked alignments is not mere “moral coding” - it is removing an element of the game added by a bigoted eugenicist that was intentionally added to the game to promote racism. That is an unfortunate fact about the game’s history, but it is a fact. This is not really something I think anyone really wants to discuss in great detail, but “we felt we had to remove intentional racism” is a necessary backdrop to the conversation and understanding why Wizards had very little choice in removing these elements from the game.
Of course, there are certain parts of the player base who ignore that fact for one reason or another, often wrapping their complaints in the guise that it “makes the game less interesting.”
However, throughout the game’s history, forced alignments have been a documented stifle on creativity. Gatekeeping players or DMs refusing to allow players/NPCs who break their default. Planes like Eberron or countless homebrew worlds that try to do different things with their species… held back by “but RAW says this group HAS to be evil.”
Removal of these strict alignments in the default book frees up creativity for players, rather than hinders it. It removes a default in the base rules that has caused problems, while still allowing players and DMs to apply stricter rules in their homerule. That is just common sense game design - it is generally easier to go from a flexible default to a more limiting one, than to go the other direction.
I'm pretty sure but not certain that alignment was previously more keyed for class rather than race/species.
The race/species alignments were found in monster stat blocks.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
There's a lot to unpack here, so lets go step-by-step.
I don't really see how this is true. When you DM the game, it can be whatever you and your players want it to be. WotC changing something like not having all goblins be stated to be evil in their stat block does not mean you can't DM a game in which all goblins are evil. You absolutely can. You have narrative authority over your games. If you are playing in someone else's game and they don't subscribe to "all goblins are evil" and your character starts slaughtering goblins for no reason, yeah there will probably be in-game repercussions, but that will happen in any game when you are not interacting with the game world in good faith.
This argument doesn't really work for me for two reasons. The first is that when you say "It makes storytelling harder because now DMs have to explain why these characters are bad/evil/worth killing instead of just being part of an evil race you can kill for fun," that just sounds like being a lazy DM. It does not make storytelling harder to say "this group of bandits has been terrorizing the towns nearby" rather than just "you encounter a pack of goblins. Roll for initiative". In fact, in the "pack of goblins" example, there is not storytelling. You aren't interacting with the world or the story or the lore, you're simply reducing NPC HP from 25 to 0. Yay? If that is the type of game you want to play or DM, that is absolutely fine, have your fun. But for me as a DM creating story and plot and hooks that engage the players in the world is more fun for my table than simply battling stat blocks for no real reason.
The second part is, if you're saying it disconnects you from decades of D&D storytelling: no it does not. You can still build and play in worlds that follow that same worldbuilding of "this race is all evil because reasons". No one can stop you. WotC is not going to come to your house and make you change your NPCs from "Evil" to "Good". All the lore, all the mythology, everything you grew up with is still there, exactly as it was before 5e 2024, or even 5e. Nothing has to change for you and how you play the game, unless you are playing in games where the DM does not subscribe to the "all goblins are evil" trope, but that could have happened in 2nd Edition just as easily as 5e.
"Fictional worlds are supposed to challenge you" you say, however you seemingly want to play in a world where you can classify an entire race/species as "evil" to just wantonly kill them without moral issues or in-game repercussions. That is kind of the opposite of challenging you. It is just setting the stage for mindless violence. Again, you can absolutely play how you want at your table, and can build your worlds how you want them, but for MY games that I DM, I really prefer to craft stories that are of interest to my players, and none of my players would be happy with a campaign where they simply murder folks of a particular species because "goblins bad".
I'm also not really sure how it is extra work on the part of anyone in your campaign to have entire races/species be evil. Because it isn't in the stat block? You can really just simply as the DM say the words "All Goblins are evil in my world" and that's that. If you have new players at the table who aren't familiar with decades of lore where all goblins are meant to be cut down mindlessly, you can simply say "Your character spots a pack of goblins in the distance. They would know that goblins were created by the Goddess Grumoli to spread hate and chaos in the world. They are divinely driven to have no moral compass and cannot be redeemed." Boom, little bit of world knowledge and now all goblins are set to meet the sharp end of that player character's blade.
At any rate, the game has always been as fun as you, your DM, and the other players make it. Nothing WotC puts in the lore or takes out changed the fact that it is up to your table to make it fun. You never have to adhere to WotC lore. This is a game about creativity, and eliminating hard "rules" for worldbuilding, such as "all goblins are evil", doesn't stifle creativity, it supports it. You get to make the world, your character, your story how you want it. I think WotC reducing restrictions like that makes it a more creative and fun place to play in.
Alignment has had issues since it was created. This change makes things much easier and opens up the door for each DM to make their world and story unique.
"In my setting the dwarves of EverRock Mountain tend to be chaotic evil on the average. There's a ton of variety but their culture celebrates the individual and avarice."
I explain it that way in my game and never tell players they are forced to use an alignment.
Problem solved!
Doing it different? Problem solved! :) Exceptions land at every table and this is really no different than when 2e AD&D took away Demons and Devils as a label. They were still Demons and Devils at my table and nothing broke.
Just a suggestion here, which I have considered myself for different reasons: Go play the edition you prefer. The game that existed when you fell in love with it is still easily accessible and plenty of players are out there looking for an old school experience.
As far as "ruining a great game", that's a ridiculous supposition. In order for the game to grow it HAS to appeal to the modern YOUNGER players, not grognards like me (and you from the sound of it). They may make mistakes or take the wrong direction, but idly sitting by and trying to push a system that doesn't align with the viewpoints of potential new players would be a far worse mistake for them.
Is it? How do you even begin to find older edition decades out of print stuff and rules help et.al. and even harder, how do you find players.
Agree 100%.
The DMs Guild. They have the vast majority of books from previous editions as PDFs you can purchase from WotC
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
1: The Core rulebooks for 2024 are pretty setting agnostic. This means that newer DMs have more freedom to sculpt their own lore when it comes to their worlds. People have been running Non Evil tieflings and Orcs since 3.5, even when the books said otherwise.
1.5: I don't think Racial alignment has been in the PHB for a long LONG time. Classes like Paladin and Cleric had aligment and racial requirements when i started in the 90's but i don't remember races having it.
2: The change has been happening for a long time. Goblins on Ravnica were never evil, just tended towards chaotic and passionate behavior. Removing alignments from races opens up more player options, and supports point one in making that call more setting specific.
In the realms, Lloth worshiping Drow will still be pretty Evil, while the Drow of Imberlur who don't worship Lloth, are mostly good. (Yes, good Drow existed for decades, not just Drizzt.)
3: How does removing restrictions " Reduce Creatives freedom over time"? How does that make sense.
4: I am a longtime fan, i have been playing since the 90's and i am not "Paying for it" don't project your feelings on to all 'longtime fans.'
Also, back at ya. You being offended doesn't automatically make you right either.
5: You are free to still make Races evil. You have that power at your table. You always did. That hasn't been removed from you.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Racial alignments not only never made sense, they triple-quadruple never made sense for Player Characters (PCs), who are often outliers even in the in-universe D&D communities they originated from.
If you walked up to someone on the street and asked them what they do for a living and they replied "I'm an adventurer!" you'd probably look at them like they're drunk or crazy. It's not the kind of profession most people in a world sign up to do - and an even smaller percentage of those possess the talents, training, and spark of destiny to even survive it, let alone be any good. In the Heroic Fantasy genre (D&D's default, DMG 133), the characters we play are an extraordinary fraction of a fraction of the overall population even at level 1.
In other words - even if a statement like "Halflings are typically Chaotic Good" was something it made a lick of sense to try generalizing across even a single setting, never mind the core books of the game as a whole, it would still be an utterly irrelevant data point for a player making their exceptional Halfling adventurer. And that's the best case scenario, before even starting to unpack all the decades of ugliness from the game's roots being pointed out by posters like Caerwyn that give us a very good reason not to regress in this regard.
TL;DR 5e moving away from racial alignments makes perfect sense, and should have happened long ago.
"All Orcs are evil and all Elves are good" being interesting vs "every person in this world is an individual shaped by their own experiences and mind that can continue and grow, change, and deviate from stereotypes" being flat is a heck of a take.
If you like ....... orcs can still be enemies of mankind and everyone with good (as defined by us) in their hearts - but for all manner of reasons, not just because orcs are evil.
Also, what does it mean to be evil? What, exactly, is it evil people support? The concept of evil? Oppression may be evil, but it's exceedingly rare for the oppressed to support oppression. Also, in the real world humans invented oppression, not orcs. So there's scant reason to feel that ... if the Grand Banner of Oppression was hoisted, those that flocked to it would mostly be orcs.
Anyways. Come up with a reason why orcs and humans fight. Why does it have to be some basic difference in psychology that makes orcs want to do evil stuff for no apparent reason. For that matter, do we really imagine humans doing good for no reason? I feel like the vast majority of everyone goes around being effectively neutral basically all the time.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
It's your game, do whatever you like. Omitting a 'fixed alignment' opens up more storytelling opportunities. However, there's a key concept you're missing, that was mentioned by Justice in an interview.
The Core Rules have to apply to every world, not just the ones you know like the Forgotten Realms.
This was in discussion about why the Drow aren't inherently evil in the Monster Manual. However, they will be explicitly evil aligned in the Forgotten Realms as per the new guides coming out, because of the relationship with Llolth.
Another example is that the Orcs of Eberron are not inherently evil, because they are not in contact with Gruumsh. They are more often Neutral or Good depending on the tribe, especially the ones taught Druidism by a dragon.
The Core Rules have to apply to every world and therefore they cannot have specific restrictions if those restrictions don't apply to every world. This has nothing to do with your politics and everything to do with ensuring that the creativity of Dungeon Masters around the world are not constrained by specific restrictions that already do not apply to every official setting.
Not everthing is your "War on Woke". It has nothing to with people being offended. It is a requirement of their need to apply to all settings.
FR Drow will be evil. Feel free to hate on the "dark skinned elf" in peace.
While I don't care much about alignment, I do think it's a shame that all the species have become so bland and generic. A trend that I think really started with MPMM. The 2014 PHB included a comment about how it can be fun to play against type. That is no longer possible in 2024, since there is no type to begin with, everything is just a blank slate.
You could argue that this new approach lets people customize things more, but that was already possible before. Nothing in the rules prevented you from reflavoring stuff in your game. On the other hand, if you don't have a clear picture of what you want, or encyclopedic knowledge of lore from past books, then making a backstory for your character has become more cumbersome.
What I wish they'd done is to present some sort of default characteristics and history for different species while stressing that it's perfectly fine to do things differently if that's what you want.
Things change. Including lores, creature/character descriptions and creature classifications. I for one, never understand the race thing when I was first introduced to 1e. I only wish that Wotc had completely lock out all playable monsters, including the Ogre and Tiefling. But they would have had a rebellion on their hands led by the Youtube channel mafia.
As for the game, I don't see how it affects DM'ing negatively, unless you made up your mind you just don't like the changes. In which case, everyone is free to continue using 2014, for right now.
I for one like the changes, sadly the only thing that continues to try to ruin the game is the rules lawyers who go through rules claiming rules don't apply because "the rules don't specify". For example, someone was arguing that since taking the Hide Action successfully gives you the Invisibility condition, you could simply wrong around where ever you want because you are invisible. Why because Hide Action doesn't say you lose the condition if you leave the Heavily Obscured area or 3/4 cover. 🤦🏿
While I understand that viewpoint, that is kind of hard to do when you dont refer to a default setting. I mean the history or characteristics for elven culture is a lot different depending on wether we are looking at Faerun or at Spelljammer. These things very much depend on the specific worlds and settings your looking at. Going with the multiverse approach kind of means you have to be more generic.
To be even clearer - all Lolthite Drow will be evil aligned in the FR book, just like all Githyanki who devote themselves to Vlaakith are evil. Even in FR however, not all Drow follow Lolth. There are neutral Drow like Jarlaxle, Seldarine Drow both on the surface and in the Underdark, and even pockets of resistance in Menzoberranzan itself, though the life expectancy of Drow taking such an approach is likely to be brief.
The important thing is that they're evil because of their actions/choices, not biology. If someone wants evil biology in D&D, that's what things like unplayable fiends and aberrations are for.
Why do "default characteristics" have to be tied to species though? Society makes far more sense for those themes. Even if you want the oh-so-original character concept of a chaotic good drow yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin, you can achieve that without saying all Drow everywhere are inherently evil - just have your character be a Menzoberranzan escapee specifically.
The "default characteristics" of any species are still there—they're the species traits such as dragonborn breath weapon or aasimar's divine abilities. Beyond the purely physiological, why would any species have "default characteristics"? It simply doesn't make sense. A dwarf that grew up in a region of the world wracked with war and famine and political corruption is going to have different characteristics—philosophy, morals, outlook on life etc—than one that grew up in a prosperous dwarfholm. Hell, two elves that grew up in the same city could have vastly different characteristics based on what social strata they belonged to. The elf living a life of elitist luxury amongst the upper echelons of the city may be crueler, more capricious, and potentially more inclined to discrimination than the one that grew up on the streets, struggling to survive and learning to rely on those around them regardless of if they're a fellow elf, human, dwarf, or goblin. Family is family and that's worth more than gold.
The notion of sociological and psychological defaults based on mortal* nature (species) rather than nurture is patently absurd and the game betters itself the more it distances itself from the notion
*Supernature, immortal, and paranormal beings obviously do not fall under the same umbrella. A creature that has lived longer than a thousand civilizations, embodies a metaphysical concept such as law or evil, or exists more as a mantel than an individual is not going to have the same freedoms of existence as mortals.
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Most creatures will develop at least some adaptive behaviors based on surroundings and upbringing (culture, climate, food and resource scarcity, etc.) hence animals or creatures that lack intellect can still be aggressive or peaceful, unpredictable or more stable in temperament or behavior even within the same species; obviously humanoid creatures are more complex by an order of magnitude. There is a ton of information online that can be found for free (and I don't mean pirated) that goes into great detail about creatures, monsters and humanoids from classic settings. So much so that it takes very little effort to find it. There is also, as mentioned above, DM's Guild for older sources you'd like to own or access offline.
Personally, I much prefer moral ambiguity (even in my big bads - the villain rarely thinks they're the bad guy) and complexity based on the things I mentioned above and on specifically who the characters are encountering. Just my humble opinion, but I think it makes story telling and role play more interesting and engaging than just, "there's a bad thing, lets kill it!"