'Dungeons & Dragons' Tries To Banish Racist Stereotypes.

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The announcement of these changes was met with mixed reviews by the fanbase.  The world of tabletop role playing games -- like many other communities -- is currently figuring out its role in the broader dialogue about racism.

When you play Dungeons and Dragons -- usually referred to as D&D -- one of the first steps is to create a character. They can be a human or an elf or a gnome or some other mythical creature.  These classifications each come with their own backstories, as well as their own baggage.  While it's generally up to you if your character is good or evil or somewhere in between, historically some of these characters were depicted in a villainous, monstrous light.  Orcs were brutish savages.  Drow (dark elves that live underground) were dark skinned and inherently evil.

Source: This NPR Article.

Personally, as a "Dungeon Master", I never asked my players to adhere to the species' alignments found in the rulebooks.  If someone wanted to play a chaotic-good Orc Bard, I could never come up with a reason other than "it's in the rules".

"Well, I am the DM, so eff the rules!  Your Orc Bard can also wear a pink tutu and dance the merengue on a high-wire as long as it makes its DEX rolls!"

So why has it taken so long for this "house rule" to become official?

Here is part of the original June 17, 2020 announcement from WotC: Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.

It does seem to parallel the way Tolkien shifted his depiction of the dwarfs between The Hobbit (pre WWII) and LOTR (post WWII).

I must confess I never went for D&D much (Warhammer 40K was my thing) so don’t have any emotional investment here.

Did read a tie-in novel with a Drow protagonist though... but I imagined him as deathly pale skinned for some reason: probably because being a subterranean species that made (to me at any rate) more sense biologically.

I could see that an argument could be made that a series of prefaces acknowledging the problematic aspects of existing works in all future printings would be more appropriate (honest?) than altering the text to expunge such material.

I’ve always found Orcs a bit nonsensical in every fantasy I’ve read though: a major & important species that has no real elite culture or systematic conception of the world of any kind?
Credibility issues.

It seems strange to have a fixed moral alignment for life.

This should increase character design options.

I get getting rid of the locked alignment thing, but do people really take a look at this:



and think "yep, those are black people"? Especially considering there are already actual, human black people in the game. (In a related article in a similar vein, someone said that Orcs were a negative stereotype of black people.)

In Traveller (a sci-fi RPG), there is a branch of humans called the Zhodani.  From the game's beginning, they practices psionics as a way of life.  To them, psionically adjusting someone's attitude to maintain society is seen as normal and good.  Ongoing clinical depression is virtually unheard of, and most of the population is happy and grateful for the interventions of the Tavrechedl ("Thought Police").

In the Imperium, however, the possession and use of psionics is punishable under Imperial and local law.  Punishment ranges from exile to prison to lobotomy (or simply death).  While the government does maintain a couple of secret training centers (for its Intelligence service), the vast majority of the citizenry perceives psionics as a sickness (at best) or perverted criminal activity (at worst).

The Zhodani mistrusts the Imperium as a polity of liars, thieves, and cheats in need of assimilation into Zhodani society.  The Imperium views the Zhodani as a polity of mind-control tyrants who enslave the citizens and "brainwash" them into contentment, and who should be conquered, contained, and eventually eliminated.

Both empires consider themselves more moral than the other.

This isn't a matter of "right" versus "wrong", but a matter of cultural context.

Dungeons & Dragon was first published in 1974.  Traveller was first published in 1977.  I often wonder why Traveller is morally relativistic, while D&D was morally absolute (and only now changing).

I'm fine with this, as long as it has the added benefit of getting control freak DMs to shut up about characters not being "true" to their races because of their alignment. My fantasy character will act however and do whatever the hell it pleases as long as it fits the campaign. lol

I’ve never used the alignment chart.

Like a few people here, the first time I met a Drow I imagined them as very pale-skinned. I ended up taking over the NPC’s sheet (we hired them as a mercenary because we lost a party member, so I played as two characters at once) and the whole time that was how I imagined them.

I don’t really care about morality while playing D&D. My characters tend to fight anything that gets in the way.