I have read through some recent articles from WotC, about their a new direction they wanna go with races in DnD. I wanna quickly say that this is not at all a political post! I am just sharing some of my views on the game and the new direction i see things going, as someone who loves this game. Some people have said that races in DnD are racist and make connections between some the the fantasy races and real life racism. I believe there is no connection. Anyone who looks a drow or an orc and thinks that they are somehow linked to racial minorities in the real world are the ones who are racist. Most people don't think that way, they are fantasy races with their own influences. Drow and orcs are evil because the are linked to and worship evil deities. I just don't like this idea of taking away what makes these races unique, which is tied to their lore and the abilities they get. Like in the new Tasha's Calderon of Everything, they are gonna be offering rules for essentially taking away a lot of what makes the races in DnD unique. DnD worlds are super diverse and have many races of creatures and almost always races get along. I really don't see the need to push this whole idea that somehow there is racism in DnD or that some cultures have privilege. If one DM or one player wants to change something and have drow be completely good, they can! The beauty of DnD is that freedom to do as you like. But I don't like this new idea of making all races blank slates and taking away their unique abilities, traits and even cultures, then all races become less interesting if you take these things away. I would be happy to hear if any of you agree, or disagree and why.
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Anyone who looks a drow or an orc and thinks that they are somehow linked to racial minorities in the real world are the ones who are racist.
You missed the point.
The problems being addressed in the future are two-fold. First, it is nearly impossible to play, for example, a dwarven wizard because there are no dwarven subraces with int-bonuses. But this is a very minor point. They're simply increasing our ability to make choices when we decide what we want to play.
The second, however, is much larger and it does, in fact, stem from racism. Not necessarily a political or cultural definition of racism as it stems towards minorities in the real world, though the problem does come from the same place. The problem is a lack of understanding of the "monster races" in question. It's a lack of definition and a lack of background. A lack of investment in a part of the game we simply take for granted beyond the blades of our swords.
We've been limiting ourselves as gamers at the very core of our games by our own preconceived notions of what things *should be*...which is racism at its core. Wizards isn't trying to call all of us "bad, racist people". They're simply trying to correct an oversight in the design of the game and differentiate between biological advantages and cultural ones, while at the same time give the DM tools to make things like Hobgoblins more interesting than they currently are by allowing the GM to more easily give them depth and background.
Perhaps that is the point, but I think that doing this is completely unnecessary. If a DM wants to change a creatures lore and stat bonuses, they can and have been for years. I don't wanna see DnD go into a "oh we have to worry about the beholders feelings because we don't know all he has been through." In DnD some things are evil, exploring why may be interesting , but I don't wanna start taking that away, it'll make each of the awesome unique races, less interesting. The legend of Drizzt was largely so awesome because of the evil he came from.
And preconceived notions? All the time in DnD people change things to better fit the story they want to tell. I have never seen this as an issue and feel like it is a poor direction to go with game design. R.A Salvatore had Drizzt leave his evil society and come to the surface to help people. All the time people will have perhaps a red dragon that does an act of good or there are some peaceful kobolds that don't wanna steal and kill. But those stories are interesting because their cultures are normally evil or perhaps some genetic or magical powers makes them evil. If we put everything io a gray zone, tgen suddenly anytime a monster does something good, its like "well lot's do."
People break the preconceived notions of races and montsers all the time. I as a DM, do. In my homebrew world, many orcs are good,because they turned against Gruumsh. But if you take that lore away, then suddenly orc is just a bulkier human and they aren't interesting and unique. If a DM wants to give more depth to hobgoblins they can! The optional rule for changing around racial bonuses, although I don't like it, is fine. What I don't like is that some people in WotC have been saying that somehow orcs and drow are racist and do make connections between them and real life issues. I think that this is bad, because why can't a culture be evil? The reason for why can be explored, but don't take it away. I also don't like the way this is going, because then where do we stop. At some point we'll have to ask the murderous lich about it's feelings before killing it.
I'm pretty torn on the subject. On one hand I like the different species being unique and different. On the other I see how it could be accused of racism, especially with drow (literally just a race of elves who are all black skinned and evil). Personally I'd like both a free and a floating stat bonus for each species (which can't be put in the same attribute). That way any species can be anything equally well, but there is also an inherent difference between each.
The question is now will people stat to have issue with the species traits? Will an elves trance ability, dragonborns breath, aarokokas flight, or golitaths powerful build be considered unfair and racist? Unless you make every single species a perfect reskin with no variety, there will always be something which can be exploited to be slightly more powerful in some way.
I'd like to see cultural and species traits to be separated though. An elf brought up by dragonborn in their society should speak draconic, not elvish. But they still wouldn't have the breath weapon and would still have the sleeping trance.
I think these adjustments in direction are to change the common idea of "These are the rules..." to an idea more like "These are some ideas you can start with...". If anything, the oversight was mostly that it wasn't well-explained how experiences can (and possibly should) be tailored as necessary instead of relying so heavily on stat blocks and written descriptions. If I'm right (and I might not be), the new source would give examples of more options people can use to customize the adventures and give examples of how to customize things further. Just like XGtE stated, "Ideas, not rules," I don't think the new source is going to be forced upon players.
If many of the guesses as to the purpose of the new content were correct (EDIT: and I don't think their guesses are correct), it would put an incredible burden upon the DM (EDIT: especially a new DM) to generate entire histories of nearly every living thing involved in what would usually be a simple encounter. The new content might just be encouraging stories to be more flexible at the DMs discretion rather than adhering completely to the stat blocks in the MM or descriptions in the PHB.
Without seeing the new content, though, I cannot be certain. It's just a guess of an opinion based on a feeling, not fact.
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 have read through some recent articles from WotC, about their a new direction they wanna go with races in DnD. I wanna quickly say that this is not at all a political post! I am just sharing some of my views on the game and the new direction i see things going, as someone who loves this game. Some people have said that races in DnD are racist and make connections between some the the fantasy races and real life racism. I believe there is no connection. Anyone who looks a drow or an orc and thinks that they are somehow linked to racial minorities in the real world are the ones who are racist. Most people don't think that way, they are fantasy races with their own influences. Drow and orcs are evil because the are linked to and worship evil deities. I just don't like this idea of taking away what makes these races unique, which is tied to their lore and the abilities they get. Like in the new Tasha's Calderon of Everything, they are gonna be offering rules for essentially taking away a lot of what makes the races in DnD unique. DnD worlds are super diverse and have many races of creatures and almost always races get along. I really don't see the need to push this whole idea that somehow there is racism in DnD or that some cultures have privilege. If one DM or one player wants to change something and have drow be completely good, they can! The beauty of DnD is that freedom to do as you like. But I don't like this new idea of making all races blank slates and taking away their unique abilities, traits and even cultures, then all races become less interesting if you take these things away. I would be happy to hear if any of you agree, or disagree and why.
You can just homebrew your own world where goblin, orc, and drow society are predominately evil. No one is going to come knocking on your door saying you are racist if you do. Most people would not even care what you do at your table. If I think I needed to throw an extra combat encounter at my party to ramp up the difficulty a bit, I still often defaulted to throwing in an extra raiding party of goblins, orcs, or a mix of both at my adventurers out of laziness and habit, and nobody at my table even bats an eye. Similarly, Wizards of the Coast wants to change its own world so that not all goblins, orcs, and drow are evil, and they are well within their rights to do so. Most GMs do not completely stick with the official settings and make modifications to them anyways, so it is not like it is going to impact actual gameplay much, if at all. You can still flavor things however you want. It is your table, your game.
In regards to associating fantasy races with real world races though, I think Wizards should probably remove some those negative stereotypes, both as a matter of business and as a matter of courtesy. In terms of business, this is a no brainer, as you want to appeal to as many people as possible by being inclusive and non-offensive, and caricaturizing orcs the same way as right-wing extremists describing black people is not a good look. And that leads to being a simple matter of courtesy and tact: just do not describe fantasy people the same way it is used to describe people in real life. If Wizards describe all elves to be racist religious xenophobes who only reproduce via incest and are addicted to healing magic and potions, it does not take long for anyone to associate that with a real world group of people, and I can just as easily say that Wizards is not describing any real world people since they are clearly talking about elves here.
To elaborate on courtesy a bit more, do I think people need to grow a bit of skin? Yes, I do. However, I also recognize that telling people to suck it up can come off as condescending, rude, and uncaring. If your spouse or family member experienced sexual abuse in the past are at the table, do you really want to emulate Goblin Slayer and incorporate elements of **** and sexual slavery into your D&D game just to spice things up? If your friend's dog died and you have another friend who is from Asia, do you really want to throw in an adventuring arc into your game and go into grisly detail about how a Yuan-Ti criminal syndicate kidnaps and butchers pet cats and dogs for their soft marbled meat to be sold in the black market, just to increase players' emotional investment? Should Wizards keep describing their orcs as big dumb brutes who procreate profusely and earn a living through arson and pillage, while the African-American and minority communities in the real world are dealing with police incompetence and brutality right now? Should we and Wizards just tell these people that life is not fair and grow up? I think that manners and common sense suggest that we should leave sensitive subjects off the table, and especially off of official publication. D&D is pretty modular, so experienced players and veterans can always homebrew gritty stuff back into the game, just as modders from LoversLab can inject adult content into Skyrim.
I agree that retconning races this way leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially since the drow does not even have anything close to a real world analog (at least not that I know of). However, I cannot think of a better way to address the issue in regards to Orcs and Vistani, and I think rewriting lore this way is the best option forward, even if I do not particularly like it. While Wizards is at it, they might as well eliminate evil from the drow and other playable races too and get it all over with to future proof any negative association that may come up in the future. At a GM's table though, the GM is the god of their world, and you and I can still have orc and goblin societies who worship evil gods and pillage. If your players like darker themes and all consent to it, feel free to throw in ****, cannibalism, incest, genocide, racism, religious persecution, politics, human torture, animal abuse, etc. into the game too. Warhammer 40,000, A Game of Thrones, Kingdom Death Monster, etc. are all works that thrive on taboos; the beauty of D&D is that its lore and mechanics are practically completely independent of each other, so you can easily strip the default family friendly paint job and replace it with a paint scheme as dark and as gritty as you want, while still keeping the underlying engine intact.
If one DM or one player wants to change something and have drow be completely good, they can! The beauty of DnD is that freedom to do as you like.
How does the release of a D&D book, official or otherwise infringe upon, remove, or interfere with the ability for any DM to still do this?
Yeah, exactly this point. D&D's flavor and mechanics are pretty independent from each other. Battlemasters can be just as magical as Eldritch Knights if you want to reflavor maneuvers as magical abilities. Wizards can similarly be reflavored as a human with access to modern/futuristic technology.
I prefer the way EN worlds 5.5e species system works, letting you get racial traits from species and languages and proficiences and ability score increases from your background. Species are still very unique, but they are not tied to asi's.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
The beauty of DnD is that freedom to do as you like.
This is true. So why people are getting bent out of shape over an optional, additional way to approach D&D is baffling to me.
If you don't like it, this will be as easy to ignore as Rick and Morty content or the Grung race. What other consenting D&D players choose to do in the confines of their own homes doesn't affect you in the slightest. Focus on your game and I'll focus on mine.
because there are no dwarven subraces with int-bonuses.
Mark of Warding Dwarf: "Am I a joke to you?"
--
You can go point buy / standard array and get to Int 20 using class ASIs alone. There's also items that boost Int.
I fully support the idea of more freedom with racial bonuses so it is easier to mix 'n' match. However, to say wizards are nearly impossible to play without a racial bonus is utter hogwash from every conceivable angle. I've seen wizards with starting 14 in INT be perfectly useful members of the party by focusing on utility and support spells that don't rely on your Int at all. I've seen wizards with Int 16 even at 16th level still blast enemies and support the party well.
Racials are certainly useful. They are not required. At all. To say otherwise is disengenuous and demonstrably false.
I agree with your overall sentiment about racials and such. But as a suggestion I'd recommend using actual facts in your argument rather than falsehoods. It will add more credibility and weight to your words.
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I feel "I want to talk about race and D&D" is becoming the new "I own the physical books, why can't I just have them on D&D Beyond?" sufferfest.
There really ought to be a mod allowance to just preemptively lock "asked and answered" topics.
There are at least three extensive threads on this topic. Did you read any of them? Do you really think you're coming at this topic with a new take? Do you really think you're going to get any new insight on this beyond what's already been extensively written in three other threads. You're not. You're going to get the same group of people coming in at loggerheads with the same position.
At least wait until the dang "game changer" book (actually a list of _options_ from what I understand doing exactly the "let DMs change it if they want" ... you just don't want that option published?) and see how radically your existing game is disrupted.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
@Gamma: It's worth noting that this isn't necessarily just about removing allusions to real-life minorities or ethnic groups. The idea in and of itself that a sapient species with the full emotional range of humanity, capable of conversing with us and close enough to us to produce viable offspring with us after a trip to the Bone Zone, is so Always Chaotic Evil that only one single individual in their entire history as a species has ever broken that alignment is not really a good one. The notion that an entire kind of people is just beyond the pale and an acceptable target for genocide doesn't sit well with a lot of folks, regardless of whether or not that kind of people conforms closely to an IRL phenotype or culture.
People seem to be arguing 'that's just the way D&D has always been tho'. True. And perhaps that's one of the reasons it hasn't grown. Note: video games were invented after D&D/tabletop roleplaying was, and have achieved many thousands of times the success. One may not want to stand in the way of modernization attempts, especially since you yourself have noted that a specific DM can restore the Always Chaotic Evil Murderbait tag to any species he likes for his specific table. That shit shouldn't be forcibly baked into the default lore, though. One of the (many) reasons I will never run a game in Faerun now that we have an official, codified Exandria to run games in, instead.
EDIT: Apologies, Midnight. Catching up after a nap, and I remember seeing that question from Gamma more than once but not much in the way of answers to it. The whole 'who the heck are the DROW offending, they're not at all like any IRL people' thing, which seems to miss enough of the point that I figured that, at least, was worth answering.
The rules in Tasha's, eh. We had our chance on that one.
What is racist about it? I do not see the connection between made up fantasy races with their own looks, history, culture, magic and gods and any peoples in the real world. The fact that some races are purely evil is an interesting thing to explore. I feel like watering in down into a gray zone would diminish how unique they are. Personally I don't like Kenku, I think they are boring and difficult to portray, does that make me a racist against birds? NO. These are made up fantasy races. Why doe sit have to be political. I just wanna keep the lore of these races and the awesome uniqueness of everything in DnD.
What is racist about it? I do not see the connection between made up fantasy races with their own looks, history, culture, magic and gods and any peoples in the real world. The fact that some races are purely evil is an interesting thing to explore. I feel like watering in down into a gray zone would diminish how unique they are. Personally I don't like Kenku, I think they are boring and difficult to portray, does that make me a racist against birds? NO. These are made up fantasy races. Why doe sit have to be political. I just wanna keep the lore of these races and the awesome uniqueness of everything in DnD.
Then do so.
The new book doesn't change any of that in the slightest. It's some optional rules that you don't have to use/allow.
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On another point. I understand that the options that are gonna be introduced in Tasha's are optional rules and a DM can do whatever they like and just not use it. But my issue is that I don't see it stopping here. I see them trying to water down the uniqueness of the races, their lore and abilities more and more as we go. What happens if 6e comes around and the player's handbook just has a bunch of races with vague, uninteresting lore and no unique abilities and race essentially becomes a build your own abilities section. Then when the races are watered down just to basic traits and looks, then their looks will be deemed racist "why do the halflings have to be small?" "Why do the dwarfs have to be stockier then others?" Then nothing is allowed because everything is deemed offensive.
The topic of how real world racism and real world sentiments of racism does or doesn't apply to D&D was discussed and eventually locked. So far, nothing new has been mentioned in this thread.
To try to avoid going down that road, I want to state again that I don't see TCoE as some kind of manifesto that'll destroy D&D. Maybe it will, but I'll just have to wait and see what it actually offers.
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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.
The optional rules are fine. And I suppose we shall see it's impact on the game. Honestly I just love this game. I think that if this will become the new standard in the future, that it will just make the game less interesting and the races will be less unique. I feel like it will just take away from the game.
I have read through some recent articles from WotC, about their a new direction they wanna go with races in DnD. I wanna quickly say that this is not at all a political post! I am just sharing some of my views on the game and the new direction i see things going, as someone who loves this game. Some people have said that races in DnD are racist and make connections between some the the fantasy races and real life racism. I believe there is no connection. Anyone who looks a drow or an orc and thinks that they are somehow linked to racial minorities in the real world are the ones who are racist. Most people don't think that way, they are fantasy races with their own influences. Drow and orcs are evil because the are linked to and worship evil deities. I just don't like this idea of taking away what makes these races unique, which is tied to their lore and the abilities they get. Like in the new Tasha's Calderon of Everything, they are gonna be offering rules for essentially taking away a lot of what makes the races in DnD unique. DnD worlds are super diverse and have many races of creatures and almost always races get along. I really don't see the need to push this whole idea that somehow there is racism in DnD or that some cultures have privilege. If one DM or one player wants to change something and have drow be completely good, they can! The beauty of DnD is that freedom to do as you like. But I don't like this new idea of making all races blank slates and taking away their unique abilities, traits and even cultures, then all races become less interesting if you take these things away. I would be happy to hear if any of you agree, or disagree and why.
You missed the point.
The problems being addressed in the future are two-fold. First, it is nearly impossible to play, for example, a dwarven wizard because there are no dwarven subraces with int-bonuses. But this is a very minor point. They're simply increasing our ability to make choices when we decide what we want to play.
The second, however, is much larger and it does, in fact, stem from racism. Not necessarily a political or cultural definition of racism as it stems towards minorities in the real world, though the problem does come from the same place. The problem is a lack of understanding of the "monster races" in question. It's a lack of definition and a lack of background. A lack of investment in a part of the game we simply take for granted beyond the blades of our swords.
We've been limiting ourselves as gamers at the very core of our games by our own preconceived notions of what things *should be*...which is racism at its core. Wizards isn't trying to call all of us "bad, racist people". They're simply trying to correct an oversight in the design of the game and differentiate between biological advantages and cultural ones, while at the same time give the DM tools to make things like Hobgoblins more interesting than they currently are by allowing the GM to more easily give them depth and background.
Perhaps that is the point, but I think that doing this is completely unnecessary. If a DM wants to change a creatures lore and stat bonuses, they can and have been for years. I don't wanna see DnD go into a "oh we have to worry about the beholders feelings because we don't know all he has been through." In DnD some things are evil, exploring why may be interesting , but I don't wanna start taking that away, it'll make each of the awesome unique races, less interesting. The legend of Drizzt was largely so awesome because of the evil he came from.
And preconceived notions? All the time in DnD people change things to better fit the story they want to tell. I have never seen this as an issue and feel like it is a poor direction to go with game design. R.A Salvatore had Drizzt leave his evil society and come to the surface to help people. All the time people will have perhaps a red dragon that does an act of good or there are some peaceful kobolds that don't wanna steal and kill. But those stories are interesting because their cultures are normally evil or perhaps some genetic or magical powers makes them evil. If we put everything io a gray zone, tgen suddenly anytime a monster does something good, its like "well lot's do."
People break the preconceived notions of races and montsers all the time. I as a DM, do. In my homebrew world, many orcs are good,because they turned against Gruumsh. But if you take that lore away, then suddenly orc is just a bulkier human and they aren't interesting and unique. If a DM wants to give more depth to hobgoblins they can! The optional rule for changing around racial bonuses, although I don't like it, is fine. What I don't like is that some people in WotC have been saying that somehow orcs and drow are racist and do make connections between them and real life issues. I think that this is bad, because why can't a culture be evil? The reason for why can be explored, but don't take it away. I also don't like the way this is going, because then where do we stop. At some point we'll have to ask the murderous lich about it's feelings before killing it.
I'm pretty torn on the subject. On one hand I like the different species being unique and different. On the other I see how it could be accused of racism, especially with drow (literally just a race of elves who are all black skinned and evil). Personally I'd like both a free and a floating stat bonus for each species (which can't be put in the same attribute). That way any species can be anything equally well, but there is also an inherent difference between each.
The question is now will people stat to have issue with the species traits? Will an elves trance ability, dragonborns breath, aarokokas flight, or golitaths powerful build be considered unfair and racist? Unless you make every single species a perfect reskin with no variety, there will always be something which can be exploited to be slightly more powerful in some way.
I'd like to see cultural and species traits to be separated though. An elf brought up by dragonborn in their society should speak draconic, not elvish. But they still wouldn't have the breath weapon and would still have the sleeping trance.
I think these adjustments in direction are to change the common idea of "These are the rules..." to an idea more like "These are some ideas you can start with...". If anything, the oversight was mostly that it wasn't well-explained how experiences can (and possibly should) be tailored as necessary instead of relying so heavily on stat blocks and written descriptions. If I'm right (and I might not be), the new source would give examples of more options people can use to customize the adventures and give examples of how to customize things further. Just like XGtE stated, "Ideas, not rules," I don't think the new source is going to be forced upon players.
If many of the guesses as to the purpose of the new content were correct (EDIT: and I don't think their guesses are correct), it would put an incredible burden upon the DM (EDIT: especially a new DM) to generate entire histories of nearly every living thing involved in what would usually be a simple encounter. The new content might just be encouraging stories to be more flexible at the DMs discretion rather than adhering completely to the stat blocks in the MM or descriptions in the PHB.
Without seeing the new content, though, I cannot be certain. It's just a guess of an opinion based on a feeling, not fact.
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.
How does the release of a D&D book, official or otherwise infringe upon, remove, or interfere with the ability for any DM to still do this?
All things Lich - DM tips, tricks, and other creative shenanigans
You can just homebrew your own world where goblin, orc, and drow society are predominately evil. No one is going to come knocking on your door saying you are racist if you do. Most people would not even care what you do at your table. If I think I needed to throw an extra combat encounter at my party to ramp up the difficulty a bit, I still often defaulted to throwing in an extra raiding party of goblins, orcs, or a mix of both at my adventurers out of laziness and habit, and nobody at my table even bats an eye. Similarly, Wizards of the Coast wants to change its own world so that not all goblins, orcs, and drow are evil, and they are well within their rights to do so. Most GMs do not completely stick with the official settings and make modifications to them anyways, so it is not like it is going to impact actual gameplay much, if at all. You can still flavor things however you want. It is your table, your game.
In regards to associating fantasy races with real world races though, I think Wizards should probably remove some those negative stereotypes, both as a matter of business and as a matter of courtesy. In terms of business, this is a no brainer, as you want to appeal to as many people as possible by being inclusive and non-offensive, and caricaturizing orcs the same way as right-wing extremists describing black people is not a good look. And that leads to being a simple matter of courtesy and tact: just do not describe fantasy people the same way it is used to describe people in real life. If Wizards describe all elves to be racist religious xenophobes who only reproduce via incest and are addicted to healing magic and potions, it does not take long for anyone to associate that with a real world group of people, and I can just as easily say that Wizards is not describing any real world people since they are clearly talking about elves here.
To elaborate on courtesy a bit more, do I think people need to grow a bit of skin? Yes, I do. However, I also recognize that telling people to suck it up can come off as condescending, rude, and uncaring. If your spouse or family member experienced sexual abuse in the past are at the table, do you really want to emulate Goblin Slayer and incorporate elements of **** and sexual slavery into your D&D game just to spice things up? If your friend's dog died and you have another friend who is from Asia, do you really want to throw in an adventuring arc into your game and go into grisly detail about how a Yuan-Ti criminal syndicate kidnaps and butchers pet cats and dogs for their soft marbled meat to be sold in the black market, just to increase players' emotional investment? Should Wizards keep describing their orcs as big dumb brutes who procreate profusely and earn a living through arson and pillage, while the African-American and minority communities in the real world are dealing with police incompetence and brutality right now? Should we and Wizards just tell these people that life is not fair and grow up? I think that manners and common sense suggest that we should leave sensitive subjects off the table, and especially off of official publication. D&D is pretty modular, so experienced players and veterans can always homebrew gritty stuff back into the game, just as modders from LoversLab can inject adult content into Skyrim.
I agree that retconning races this way leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially since the drow does not even have anything close to a real world analog (at least not that I know of). However, I cannot think of a better way to address the issue in regards to Orcs and Vistani, and I think rewriting lore this way is the best option forward, even if I do not particularly like it. While Wizards is at it, they might as well eliminate evil from the drow and other playable races too and get it all over with to future proof any negative association that may come up in the future. At a GM's table though, the GM is the god of their world, and you and I can still have orc and goblin societies who worship evil gods and pillage. If your players like darker themes and all consent to it, feel free to throw in ****, cannibalism, incest, genocide, racism, religious persecution, politics, human torture, animal abuse, etc. into the game too. Warhammer 40,000, A Game of Thrones, Kingdom Death Monster, etc. are all works that thrive on taboos; the beauty of D&D is that its lore and mechanics are practically completely independent of each other, so you can easily strip the default family friendly paint job and replace it with a paint scheme as dark and as gritty as you want, while still keeping the underlying engine intact.
Yeah, exactly this point. D&D's flavor and mechanics are pretty independent from each other. Battlemasters can be just as magical as Eldritch Knights if you want to reflavor maneuvers as magical abilities. Wizards can similarly be reflavored as a human with access to modern/futuristic technology.
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I prefer the way EN worlds 5.5e species system works, letting you get racial traits from species and languages and proficiences and ability score increases from your background. Species are still very unique, but they are not tied to asi's.
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Just gonna point out. This was already discussed to the point of being locked for over thirty pages just a month or so ago. Records here, so everybody can catch up on the totally-not-political-no-really-I-swear talks about being racist in D&D: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/79302-dungeons-dragons-next-book-will-offer-an
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This is true. So why people are getting bent out of shape over an optional, additional way to approach D&D is baffling to me.
If you don't like it, this will be as easy to ignore as Rick and Morty content or the Grung race. What other consenting D&D players choose to do in the confines of their own homes doesn't affect you in the slightest. Focus on your game and I'll focus on mine.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
** looks at his multiple Dwarven wizards **
** visible confusion **
Mark of Warding Dwarf: "Am I a joke to you?"
--
You can go point buy / standard array and get to Int 20 using class ASIs alone. There's also items that boost Int.
I fully support the idea of more freedom with racial bonuses so it is easier to mix 'n' match. However, to say wizards are nearly impossible to play without a racial bonus is utter hogwash from every conceivable angle. I've seen wizards with starting 14 in INT be perfectly useful members of the party by focusing on utility and support spells that don't rely on your Int at all. I've seen wizards with Int 16 even at 16th level still blast enemies and support the party well.
Racials are certainly useful. They are not required. At all. To say otherwise is disengenuous and demonstrably false.
I agree with your overall sentiment about racials and such. But as a suggestion I'd recommend using actual facts in your argument rather than falsehoods. It will add more credibility and weight to your words.
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I feel "I want to talk about race and D&D" is becoming the new "I own the physical books, why can't I just have them on D&D Beyond?" sufferfest.
There really ought to be a mod allowance to just preemptively lock "asked and answered" topics.
There are at least three extensive threads on this topic. Did you read any of them? Do you really think you're coming at this topic with a new take? Do you really think you're going to get any new insight on this beyond what's already been extensively written in three other threads. You're not. You're going to get the same group of people coming in at loggerheads with the same position.
At least wait until the dang "game changer" book (actually a list of _options_ from what I understand doing exactly the "let DMs change it if they want" ... you just don't want that option published?) and see how radically your existing game is disrupted.
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@Gamma:
It's worth noting that this isn't necessarily just about removing allusions to real-life minorities or ethnic groups. The idea in and of itself that a sapient species with the full emotional range of humanity, capable of conversing with us and close enough to us to produce viable offspring with us after a trip to the Bone Zone, is so Always Chaotic Evil that only one single individual in their entire history as a species has ever broken that alignment is not really a good one. The notion that an entire kind of people is just beyond the pale and an acceptable target for genocide doesn't sit well with a lot of folks, regardless of whether or not that kind of people conforms closely to an IRL phenotype or culture.
People seem to be arguing 'that's just the way D&D has always been tho'. True. And perhaps that's one of the reasons it hasn't grown. Note: video games were invented after D&D/tabletop roleplaying was, and have achieved many thousands of times the success. One may not want to stand in the way of modernization attempts, especially since you yourself have noted that a specific DM can restore the Always Chaotic Evil Murderbait tag to any species he likes for his specific table. That shit shouldn't be forcibly baked into the default lore, though. One of the (many) reasons I will never run a game in Faerun now that we have an official, codified Exandria to run games in, instead.
EDIT: Apologies, Midnight. Catching up after a nap, and I remember seeing that question from Gamma more than once but not much in the way of answers to it. The whole 'who the heck are the DROW offending, they're not at all like any IRL people' thing, which seems to miss enough of the point that I figured that, at least, was worth answering.
The rules in Tasha's, eh. We had our chance on that one.
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What is racist about it? I do not see the connection between made up fantasy races with their own looks, history, culture, magic and gods and any peoples in the real world. The fact that some races are purely evil is an interesting thing to explore. I feel like watering in down into a gray zone would diminish how unique they are. Personally I don't like Kenku, I think they are boring and difficult to portray, does that make me a racist against birds? NO. These are made up fantasy races. Why doe sit have to be political. I just wanna keep the lore of these races and the awesome uniqueness of everything in DnD.
Then do so.
The new book doesn't change any of that in the slightest. It's some optional rules that you don't have to use/allow.
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On another point. I understand that the options that are gonna be introduced in Tasha's are optional rules and a DM can do whatever they like and just not use it. But my issue is that I don't see it stopping here. I see them trying to water down the uniqueness of the races, their lore and abilities more and more as we go. What happens if 6e comes around and the player's handbook just has a bunch of races with vague, uninteresting lore and no unique abilities and race essentially becomes a build your own abilities section. Then when the races are watered down just to basic traits and looks, then their looks will be deemed racist "why do the halflings have to be small?" "Why do the dwarfs have to be stockier then others?" Then nothing is allowed because everything is deemed offensive.
The topic of how real world racism and real world sentiments of racism does or doesn't apply to D&D was discussed and eventually locked. So far, nothing new has been mentioned in this thread.
To try to avoid going down that road, I want to state again that I don't see TCoE as some kind of manifesto that'll destroy D&D. Maybe it will, but I'll just have to wait and see what it actually offers.
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EDIT: Never mind. Last post made it clear this isn't a discussion of lore, this is another 'Tasha's is gonna KILL races in D&D FOREVER!' thread.
Pass.
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The optional rules are fine. And I suppose we shall see it's impact on the game. Honestly I just love this game. I think that if this will become the new standard in the future, that it will just make the game less interesting and the races will be less unique. I feel like it will just take away from the game.
=)
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