Fixing racism in D&D (/rpgs in general)

[DSMatticus]

It's less problematic for obvious reasons - mankind doesn't claim to be uniquely valuable among life on planet earth because of the size of their biceps. But ultimately racial ability score bonuses just kinda suck in general, and racism is just another reason to hate them. Why does playing a dwarf rogue have to be such an objectively bad decision? If I were writing D&D from scratch, I would add backgrounds and move ability score bonuses to those. As is, I just let players put their racial ability score bonuses wherever they want.

[OgreBattle]

I like how Oda’s One Piece does it, humans are diverse, giants are giant, fish men breath underwater and training can surpass almond those genetic traits

[DSMatticus]

With proper training, you too can surpass almond and become pistachio.

[DSMatticus]

Elf: Super long-lived, but not in a "better than you" way. This is kind of tricky because either it implies they mature super-slowly, which I'm not a fan of - too many "50-year-old toddler" memes- or it implies they're neurologically different from humans, and have a hard time staying focused on projects for a long time - by human standards they are flighty and fanciful. But that shades into "mental ability modifiers" land which obviously isn't ideal either.

Honestly, it hasn't been my experience that forty years olds are as competent as two twenty year olds. Age has some seriously diminishing returns on competence. I don't know about you, but I spend most of my time doing the same shit over and over, not improving myself in any tangible way. Wow, it's kinda depressing when you put it like that. Anyway, I expect that if you took a bunch of random people and stretched their 20's and 30's out to last five hundred years, they would not end up particularly exceptional at anything by the end of it. They'd just have a lot more interesting stories than you.

[Username17]

Charisma penalties aren't something that has aged particularly well. "Foreigners are ugly" is basically Racism 101, and I don't think there's much hope of salvaging that.

Strength bonuses and penalties aren't as bad, but to quote Wikipedia:

Black people are stereotyped as being more athletic and better at sports compared to white people.

But when these abilities get genuinely superhuman, I think the racist connotations fall away. Nymphs being supernaturally beautiful isn't the same as saying "white girls are prettier" or whatever. Giants being giant strong isn't a stand-in for bellcurve nonsense about strong black women.

-Username17

[erik]

If I were writing D&D from scratch, I would add backgrounds and move ability score bonuses to those. As is, I just let players put their racial ability score bonuses wherever they want.

What if they get two ability bonuses, one that is earmarked for a specific stat, and another that is customizable to any other stat?

So all halflings get Dexterity bump, but they also have another +2.
Humans get Charisma bump, but they also have another +2, etc.

That kind of threads the needle where races have something they're uniformly above-average in, but doesn't close the door on optimization or atypical individuals.

That's what I did in my last 3.erik version years ago.

[Username17]

What if they get two ability bonuses, one that is earmarked for a specific stat, and another that is customizable to any other stat?

Then you'd have late period 4th edition. Where each race had several classes they could be good at, but were two thirds of the class/race combinations are "wrong" because the non-floating stats still only line up with five of fifteen possible stat combinations.

Like, obviously it's better if Halflings are Rogues or Wandizards or Rangers or Assassins or Bards, than if they are literally limited to just one build of Rogues. But I don't think anyone is going to say you've solved things in any durable fashion.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

I tried the same thing for a campaign or two, but it's really just an awkward compromise, isn't it? "I'd like to open the game up to more race/class competitions, but let's not go overboard - some combinations should still be explicitly suboptimal because reasons."

It's also an awkward compromise on the "does this uncomfortably mirror racist narratives about minorities?" front. It's like going from "the typical orc isn't as intelligent as their equally typical human counterpart" to "the typical orc can be as intelligent as their equally typical human counterpart, but frequently isn't."

[maglag]

I like how Oda’s One Piece does it, humans are diverse, giants are giant, fish men breath underwater and training can surpass almond those genetic traits

Nah, you first need to get lucky at One Piece genetics lottery.

Like the protagonist was already born from a long lineage of super badasses, and explicily has Conqueror's Haki that only a few people can use regardless of much training they do.

Big Mom was already naturally super strong and tough as a child that she could take giants head on whitout training (and never did any training for all we know, quite in the contrary she spends all the time just stuffing her face).

Sanji was revealed to be the result of a super soldier program where he already got his genetic optimized before being born.

Frankie went "screw training" and just replaced his weak, inferior flesh with superior metal.

And now they're fighting to put some kid in charge of a country just because of the kid's bloodline, nevermind checking if the kid actually has any training to actually properly run a country. Surely he has the right generic traits just because daddy was a ruler too!

Plus most recent chapter superior genetic samurai spent 13 years with zero training and still kicks ass just because he has super genes that allow him to stay super fit despite spending over a decade in a tiny prison cell eating only poisoned fish, instantly curb-stomping several guards that had actually been training hard for the same period of time.

[erik]

What if they get two ability bonuses, one that is earmarked for a specific stat, and another that is customizable to any other stat?

Then you'd have late period 4th edition. Where each race had several classes they could be good at, but were two thirds of the class/race combinations are "wrong" because the non-floating stats still only line up with five of fifteen possible

I’m worried I didn’t explain well.

4e locked races into specific +2/+2 arrays. I’m saying one constant and one variable. Like halflings are +2 Dex and +2 (selected by player, any but Dex). So no master race for casters or any class really. 4e compounds the problem with their stupid class powers that are heavily ability dependent. In something more like 3e having one constant and one variable seems pretty flexible.

[Stubbazubba]

But still racially determinative. Adventurers are already on the fringes of their respective cultures, there is absolutely no reason they would universally reflect the racist genetic bell curve theories that D&D assumes. NPCs can still reflect those if it's important to you that Elves are generally skewed towards grace and dexterity.

Better to have one +2 for your class' primary ability, and then a single +2 or two +1s to others of your choice, assuming 5e-style bonus scheme. That way you should be reasonably competent in your core class abilities, and you get to express individual customization. It allows the maximum possible viable builds, and doesn't require every player to recreate "racial science" through character creation. Players can opt-in to that if they want.

[Username17]

What if they get two ability bonuses, one that is earmarked for a specific stat, and another that is customizable to any other stat?

Then you'd have late period 4th edition. Where each race had several classes they could be good at, but were two thirds of the class/race combinations are "wrong" because the non-floating stats still only line up with five of fifteen possible

I’m worried I didn’t explain well.

4e locked races into specific +2/+2 arrays. I’m saying one constant and one variable. Like halflings are +2 Dex and +2 (selected by player, any but Dex). So no master race for casters or any class really. 4e compounds the problem with their stupid class powers that are heavily ability dependent. In something more like 3e having one constant and one variable seems pretty flexible.

Riiight. That's what the later period 4e Races did. They tried "one fixed and one choice of two other bonuses" and then they tried "one fixed and one that you get to choose anything for." This is a thing that happened starting in the subsequent PHBs. So the Githzerai were an in-between race that got a bonus to Wisdom and then either a bonus to Dexterity or Intelligence. Later on they just said "fuck it" and let you pick anything you wanted for your second ability score.

You're literally talking about technology that was developed for fourth edition circa 2010.

In any case, with one fixed and one floating stat bonus, each race has 5 out of 15 stat priorities that they are allowed to be good at. That is obviously less restrictive than giving each race one out of fifteen. It is also less racist than having your Jew stand-ins or African stand-ins have a specific pre-determined dump stat.

Is it enough less restrictive and enough less racist? Not sure. In late period 4e it was not either of those things, but 4e also had a lot of really deep structural problems that weren't going away with relatively minor changes like that.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I tried the same thing for a campaign or two, but it's really just an awkward compromise, isn't it? "I'd like to open the game up to more race/class competitions, but let's not go overboard - some combinations should still be explicitly suboptimal because reasons."

I also want to point out: for those of you who want to go down this route, how many of you have actually done the math on this shit? Like, even in 4E D&D which had a shit-ton of throwaway trash races, do you know how fucking hard it was to find an INT/WIS or a STR/CHA race? You had Deva for the first one and Dragonborn for the second one. That was about it. And honestly, what the fuck did you expect? You need 15 races just to evenly cover the stat spread. And even if you had the +2 to one, +2 to one of two others that 4E D&D had, the Kalashtar STILL was the only race that had a WIS/CHA combination until the Devas got one in some dumbass Dragon magazine.

You can imagine how comical it gets with shit like a classplosion or even a PF/5E D&D-style subclassplosion. Take a look at the core classes of 3E to 5E D&D -- half of the classes need STR to do their job, while only one needs INT. Imagine how lopsided things get with the class-race spread gets then.

Combinatoric math is a bitch. Only the noob or the OSR dipshit arrogantly believes they can tame it with their discrete, brute force fumbling. Only failure and suffering awaits those who take that low road.

[DrPraetor]

All of this talk about attribute bonuses is completely besides the point.

First, it's narrow and unambitious even as far as hacks on 3rd edition go, and second it doesn't deal with the needed reforms.

Elves and Orcs are just different cultures of people which are super- and sub-human respectively. For any "generic fantasy setting", this has to go, and it doesn't matter how you shuffle points around. If you are making an RPG set in Middle Earth or the Young Kingdoms or something, you have to deal with this baggage. Otherwise you don't and shouldn't.

You can try keeping the labels in order to subvert tropes but this is a lot of work - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer - and again isn't something you should do for ye generic RPG setting.

Now, people may want to play someone who is:
[*] (Magically) elegant and graceful, with pointed ears.
[*] Bestial and ripped, with tusks and an enormous dick.

and those aren't the best impulses, but you should probably allow these without delivering a moralizing sermon. At the same time, without being preachy:
[*] Your not-elves cannot be either super-human or coded as Europeans,
[*] Your not-orcs cannot be either sub-human or coded as non-Europeans.

It is probably advisable to make these critters genus Homo so that half-breeds and so forth are viable, for reasons Frank laid out.

The easiest way to achieve this is to make the decision cosmetic, and then give all the different Homo whatevers a full range of cultural codings to choose from. So you have four orc drawings: in European-style plate armor, in a toga, in skimpy leather, and in not-Persian attire; and four elves in Samurai-armor, in desert robes, nearly-naked and painted with woad, and on horseback in Mongolian costume. The artwork alone will make the point with only stray bits of supporting world-building text. Remember, of players who want to play Orcs, at least a third will want to play them against type ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_(comics) ) - and this needs to be possible with, bluntly, no game-mechanical penalties at all. Beast is generally understood to be the most fuckable of all the X-men, so if your not-Orc can't be sensitive you have failed as badly as if you fail to deliver sexy vampires. Playing characters with and against type is the only reason you have attributes instead of just having people pick a class, and it's important that the choice to play with or actively against this type of prompt not be a focus of charop.

OTOH, if the decision is entirely cosmetic, that may be unsatisfying, so I think the best compromise is to hand out a few sub-species specific non-numerical advantages (like detecting secret doors and shit), and have a list of Sidh spells (and magic items, and so forth) that are restricted to not-Elves and Kotothi (likewise) spells that are restricted to not-Orcs.

[Harshax]

Maybe put all your bonuses should be cultural and social, not racial. There’s a few games that do this.

If you’re from an urban trade hub and an orphan you might have a bonus to cha and dex.

If you’re from the cold mountains and worship spirits: con and wis.

Then you can cosmetically be an orc, but mechanically a urban sage nerd, or cosmetically a halfling but a rage monster barbarian.

Maybe this moves the racism posts to culturally insensitive ones, but if done thoughtfully, you get the maximum number of outfits to skin you non-human races.

[Leress]

Why even have the pluses and minuses to stats in the first place?

[DrPraetor]

Completely independent of whether it's racist or culturally-supremacist or a bologna sandwich -
"Check this background box for +1 Int" is uniquely bad design for any game where you care a lot about your Int from a charop perspective: for example, if you are playing some derivative of 3rd edition D&D. If that box exists to check, not checking it is a trap option, and that penalizes any number of Wizard PCs who might not want to be from an island or a star elf or whatever.

"Check this background box to ignore situational penalties in forests" is potentially better design. It may mean you have to specify "forest ranger" or "city ranger" when you sit down at the table, which dilutes some of the advantages of class-based systems in economy of communication for character roles. It may cause you to whine to your DM about wanting things to be in forests all the time.
BUT, it might alternatively provide additional opportunities for the city rat and the country boy to take turns driving the story with their daring do, and that's desirable. It gives you something more interesting to write on your character sheet.

The same is true for things like Low Light Vision and Sleep Immunity, which might cause you to say, "our party would like to have an elf in it", as opposed to, "rangers have to be elves or they miss out."

[OgreBattle]

+2 to a stat that translates to +1 to a skill or combat accuracy or defense feels pretty fiddly.

That's the system that... gygax and arneston had jobs involving statistics or auditing or something yeah?

The level of abstraction that MtG has for "this is an elf creature" "this is a giant's sorcery" "this is a goblin instant" that does get me to notice the 'distinct traits of this identity'

I'd like to see str con int wis and so on abstracted to a point where we aren't pulling out calipers to go "hmmm yes this is a wizard skull, and hahah the under-developed cranium of a fighter...", and more ephasis on "wood elves get a reroll once per scene" "dragonpecks can do dragon terror once per scene" "orcs can rage through a debilitating effect once per scene"

----

DnD elves have a lot of baggage for little gain in my view. Live 100 years and you're no better at fighting or wizarding than a 16 year old halfling or human. It also pushes the default human to be joe sixpack diehard because your svelt long haired clean shaven human is just 'not as BL as an elf anyways'

I'd prefer they're just a sort of high level NPC fey tricky humanoid in the way giants are high level fighty humanoids and angels are high level NPC law god servants.

The DnD thing where "we have a lvl 1 PC race concept of angels and demons and giants and asgardians that make them on the same playing field as a normal human" just makes them subhuman

[Foxwarrior]

I'm in favor of representing elves with a minimum level. Maybe not quite as practical for those odd people who want to play level 1 d&d, but for everyone else it's just a cute setting quirk that makes the rules match the fluff more without inconveniencing players too much..

[erik]

Why even have the pluses and minuses to stats in the first place?

It's an easy way to give across the board bonuses (or penalties) to things related to those traits.

Now, I could totes get on board with getting rid of stat mods entirely since it is a pain in the ass to recalculate things mid-combat with ability damage or ability buffs. It kinda seems better to have a stack of specific bonuses/penalties rather than across the board bonuses.

Beast is generally understood to be the most fuckable of all the X-men

I spotted the furry!

http://comicvine.gamespot.com/forums/x- ... n-1750730/
http://www.manhuntdaily.com/whos-the-mo ... ture-past/

Oh fucking internet, you never let me down.

I don't disagree with the rest of your post, DrP. Displaying each race with a variety of cultural presentations is a good start. Or if you have a lineup of races, have them all sporting similar attire.

[Point]

But we don't have any Elf/Orc crossbreeds because they serve no narrative purpose.

The first fantasy character I ever sought to play with a group was literally half-elf, half-orc. And, as a child, the very first time I was confronted with the fact that orcs didn’t have hybrid examples with elves was the first undeniable indication of the racism inherent in fantasy. Orcs had a little plausible deniability, but that breed-distinction tore it. The white purity myth was something that came up early on in existance so I knew it when I saw it: elves were super-white-people.

From a rp standpoint, the labels on fantasy species are completely irrelevant because all of these beings are essentially human. Science fiction has true nonhumans as a genre staple, but one notes that the bulk of popular science fiction is soft-SF and, within that, space opera — and the latter is simply fantasy again. Even dragons are just peoples what fly and breathe fire and whatnot. I don’t have race conversations when I’m dealing with methane-breathers in a hard-SF world background, but such discussions are inevitable and necessary the moment Pathfinder goblins show up.

Mechanics for mixed subspecies is trivially handled: give each species a list of superpowers, have players select a mandated mix of powers from their heritage lists and, poof, done.

The main problem with races, mechanically, is stat bonuses, because stat bonuses are individually meaningless but important to PCs. Stat bonuses are meant to describe an average, but PCs aren’t playing populations, they’re playing individuals. If you sit down and make an orc NPC with massive mental attribute stats, that’s not a problem on a conceptual level, so how come it’s a problem on a mechanical level when mechanics are meant to support theme? You solve this problem by abolishing attribute bonuses entirely and sticking with super-powers and more narrowly-construed bonuses for specific items. You also provide mechanical effects from backgrounds that the subspecies will typically have, making it more difficult to stereotype people on a biological basis. Biology grants superpowers, backgrounds grant talents and skills. If gnomes get a bonus to crafting gems, that’s a problem. If they can use straight-up magic to generate gems, that feels like far less of an issue (though it might be an economic one). If non-gnomes and gnomes both can take a mercantile background mechanically, that works.

[Yesterday's Hero]

I think you can dance a bit around Int penalties/bonuses so that you can keep them in your game if you need them but also avoid the racism by not giving them to humanoid races, like orcs or whatever. That way the race of crystal beings from the beyond reality get an Int bonus and the insect people have the int penalty, but not the orcs, they just get a STR bonus or something. And on top of that you add a floating racial bonus to whatever stat you want, kinda like Pathfinder 2 (where you can even take 2 more "stat flaws" to get another stat bump and end up with insect people that can get an Int bonus).

If you go this way, however, the logical conclusion is that insect people don't have a lot of wizards in their culture because of the int penalty. I can live with that.

[deaddmwalking]

In our game, most races don't have any attribute adjustments; just abilities that are relevant. Every character gets the equivalent of a +2 to add to whatever stat they want; they also get additional attribute bonuses on an accelerated schedule compared to 3.x.

SOME RACES do have adjustments for things like Size; the fact that smaller races are weaker we feel is generally offset by other factors. SOME RACES can choose an attribute bonus to a specific attribute in place of a more generic ability. SOME RACES do have an attribute adjustment.

[Thaluikhain]

Out of interest, what's the appeal of playing a non-human that is within human ranges for stats and culture? I mean, I get the appeal of elves, being smart and good looking and long lived and just better. Drow get spiders to attack people with and an excuse to be naked.

Dwarves, gnomes, halflings...people play them, so there is clearly some appeal, but I'm not seeing it myself. What's being lost by having human (or close enough) be one thing, and your other options being something really weird?

[Iduno]

Out of interest, what's the appeal of playing a non-human that is within human ranges for stats and culture? I mean, I get the appeal of elves, being smart and good looking and long lived and just better. Drow get spiders to attack people with and an excuse to be naked.

Dwarves, gnomes, halflings...people play them, so there is clearly some appeal, but I'm not seeing it myself. What's being lost by having human (or close enough) be one thing, and your other options being something really weird?

I think you want them similar enough that they would all reasonably live and work together.