D&D General Words which replaced "race" in fantasy games

Marandahir

Crown-Forester (he/him)
You mean to say built on a premise that other people don't share, not "false pretenses". That would would imply i'm lying or being deceptive about something.
My apologies, I didn't mean to imply you were making a straw argument or lying or being deceptive, just that your pretenses about the nature of set theory in social sciences seems to be incorrect, and we can't readily engage with it. Levi-Strauss' objectivism has long since been rejected by anthrology as problematic at best. Trying to attach quantities to fundamentally qualitative questions is one of the most common mistakes made even by graduate level science students.

I'm also sorry you won't be able to respond to this. I didn't report you, but I'm not surprised by it. Good luck and best wishes upon you.
 

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Mannahnin

Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
You mean to say built on a premise that other people don't share, not "false pretenses". That would would imply i'm lying or being deceptive about something.
False for this use case. Not valid. Inapplicable.

Not that you're being deceptive.

I would argue only coloqually. Maybe I'm just completely out of touch, but I've only ever understand that use of 'race' to be an informal usage. I.e.: there are not multiple races that all belong under human - all humans are the same race, namely 'human'. That's why humans aren't categorized into species, because theyre all the same species.

So it was a political/strategic choice.

I personally don't care, I'm always going to say race just like I always say reflex save instead of dexterity save.

The colloquial usage is the problem. Yes, scientifically the idea of multiple “races” of human is complete bunk. But there is a long history of (pseudo-)scientific racism trying to use the notion of multiple distinct races of humans to justify racial hierarchies and imbalances of power. Many people still believe in this notion of race as a biologically significant category, and in much of the world, especially the US, it is still a socially significant category despite its lack of scientific validity.

The whole thing is a very touchy subject that fun imaginary elf games are probably better off distancing themselves from.

The word "race" used to be a lot more elastic than the way it's used today: it could be as big as "species" or as small as "ethnic group." The original D&D books used the word in this older sense. Frankly (and unfortunately), I don't think any of the replacement terms fills exactly the same niche.

To be honest, if we were living in a fantasy setting, we might well use the word "race" because it wouldn't have the same political connotations as it does today. (See my earlier post about how the meaning of the word used to be a lot more flexible than it has become in current usage.)
I don't know that I'd say it used to be more elastic. Rather that the meaning changed over time.

Race used to be more synonymous with the people of a country or region. The English considered themselves a distinctly different people than the Irish, and vice-versa.* They spoke (until pretty close to the modern era) of the English Race and Irish Race as distinct. Even though we now know that the distinctions between those two peoples are much more cultural than genetic or physical.

But then, during the colonial period starting a few hundred years ago, the word started to be used in a different way, more (pseudo)scientifically-based, delineating between ethnic types defined by physical characteristics like skin color or eye shape, more than by nations or cultures. It was used as part of a justification, on (spuriously) objective grounds, for the exploitation and dominance of some groups by other more powerful groups. To varying levels, but up to whole categories of people being treated as chattel, more like animals than human beings.

And unfortunately the world we live in is still grappling with the aftereffects of this categorization, and using it politically in ways that impact people's lives. There is documented statistical evidence of people being treated differently, under the law and in other social circumstances, despite legal reforms over the past half century or so. I was just reading a story about a black baseball player from a few decades ago being shocked when a white player willingly drank from a bottle he had been drinking from. Many communities in America have lost once-common public swimming pools, because people abandoned them once they were desegregated. Show Me a Hero is a recent critically-acclaimed HBO miniseries about a small city in New York grappling with the impact of redlining, and trying to block housing integration, in the 90s. While I was a teenager. In recent years we've seen a large-scale organized protest movement trying to push reform for police abuse of force, especially some apparent statistical disparities in what "races" suffer how much of it.

Given all this political and social baggage that the word still has, it makes sense to disassociate our fun elfgames from this context and the division and categorization of people in it by "race". Especially given how assigning different "races" mechanical differences kind of reifies the concept of how race used to be seen in the real world in terms of being an objective basis for disparate treatment.

*(And, relevant to the Pendragon campaign I've been playing, set in the late 5th century, back before there was a people who called themselves English, that place was occupied by a whole bunch of peoples who considered themselves different "races", including Cymric Celts, Cornish, Saxons, Angles, occasional Bretons, Franks, Scots, Danes, later Normans...)
 
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jayoungr

Legend
Supporter
I don't know that I'd say it used to be more elastic. Rather that the meaning changed over time.
I don't disagree with your historical assessment. However, there was a sizeable span of time when people were using it both in the "people of a region" sense and in the "group delineated by skin color and/or eye shape" sense. During that time, which lasted past the midpoint of the twentieth century, you could encounter both usages and work out which one was meant by context; the first definition increasingly showed up when someone wanted to sound deliberately archaic, but they could still do so and expect to be understood.

The second meaning was already starting to pull decisively ahead of the first by the time D&D was created, and that process accelerated over the next few decades. By today, you basically never see the first meaning anymore. Unfortunately, we don't really have a term that neatly replaces it.
 

Queer Venger

Dungeon Master is my Daddy
I'm mainly referring to games which removed the word 'race' rather than those descended from systems which never used that word in the first place.

Pathfinder 2E - Ancestry (2019)
Level Up (A5E) - Heritage (2021)
Shadowdark - Ancestry (2023)
Black Flag/ToV - Lineage (2024)
D&D - Species (2024)
13th Age 2E - Kin (2024)

Any others I'm missing?
for my spelljammer campaign we are going with species, has a nice sci-fi feel to it. But we also use race interchangeably.
 

Mannahnin

Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
The second meaning was already starting to pull decisively ahead of the first by the time D&D was created, and that process accelerated over the next few decades. By today, you basically never see the first meaning anymore. Unfortunately, we don't really have a term that neatly replaces it.
Not a one for one universal match, but people, heritage, and folk are all pretty darn close to that meaning. And for a game we can easily pick one and define it.
 

Argyle King

Legend
Charlaquin answered this with a more eloquent question than I would have.

I think usually there's a third option that isn't being considered – the old equality/equity/justice parable about the ball game and the box to see over the picket fence etc.

You'd need to do something if you want to help both groups feel included, and thus sell the game too both groups. For example: I have friends who refuse to play 5e let alone 4e Essentials because they dialed back away from the elegant balance of 2008 4e's AEDU power system for all characters, and they feel the game now is rigged back in favour of quadratic wizards and linear fighters. I don't agree with them, even though I vastly preferred 4e over 3.5e, as I prefer 5e over both systems, but our subjective experience with these systems have led me to buy 5e books and them not to. Their gameplay style doesn't feel included by the system.

That's okay – not all systems are going to be inclusive of every gameplay style. But they have a system that's relatively well-built to play with, and both Pathfinder 2E and 13th Age are relatively successful systems that build off of the gameplay style of 4E. But now if they were told "your way of playing is wrong and you are wrong to like it" and were bullied out of playing any successful, well-stocked RPG, or if 5e D&D was the ONLY RPG allowed to be published bc WotC aggressively pursued a copyright against anyone making an T&T RPG? That would be a problem.

This may be a problem for WotC if they want to include my friends, and maybe if enough players were like my friends, 6E would be a more dial-based system where you could make it more like 4e or more like 3.5e or more like 5E etc. Or maybe WotC by publishing updated OGLs and SRDs, will start supporting multiple editions at the same time more effectively to hopefully win my friends back as customers.

But my friends' preferences are not the same as say, a black kid opening the PHB and seeing only white characters in art of the book and thus feeling like the game doesn't belong to them. 5e has by and large strived to be big tent when it comes to people and their identities and to not reduce us down or cater to just one group of people when playing. But that's not perfect either, and some folks feel like they're losing THEIR game as it becomes more inclusive. Dark Sun and Ravenloft are great example of the complications here – both feature pretty culturally problematic ideas due to their lineage in pulp fiction works that had used those tropes. But you remove too much of them and it doesn't feel like the setting anymore. 5E D&D found a way to make Ravenloft work more or less while trying to clean it up of anti-Romani stereotypes, but even the 4E take on Dark Sun engaged in discussions taht 5E's makers want to stay far away from. So I'm not sure how we get a return to Dark Sun that stays true to what makes the setting itself while also being inclusive.

It's not perfect. It's not easy stuff, and the creators of the game are also only human and are bound to make mistakes, too.

I appreciate the response.

I suppose, from my own point of view, I am trying to understand what is considered "culturally correct" (for a lack of better words) when there is no (subjective) shared equity between two groups and trying to be more inclusive of one causes (subjective) harm to the other. (And all of that subjectively assumes that "equity" should be priority.)

From my own subjective point of view, I feel as though there comes a point at which becoming too beholden to avoiding subjective offense makes it very difficult to have a functional product.

FWIW, (and also from my own subjective point of view,) I sometimes find it offensive when other people feel it is their job to decide to be offended for me.

Years ago, I stopped going to rpg.net because the mods there held a particular point of view as to what the correct way of thinking for someone from my background ought to be; when I disagreed with that viewpoint, I was admonished. I found it a bit strange to have an authority figure explain to me that I was behaving and thinking in a way that they felt was not the approved way of thinking for someone of my own background.

I think (or at least I hope,) in that person's own mind, they felt they were doing the right thing. My point of view was that their attempt to "do right" was arguably more offensive than people who actually did/do intend to be offensive toward me. Trying to express that -even through PMs- lead to threats of moderation and a temporary ban. Eventually, I simply decided that I would prefer to no longer be a member of that community.

I understand not wanting to cause harm or anguish. Though, I'm not sure that I always understand how the choices made in pursuit of that endeavor are measured to be the correct ones. As such, I am interested in hearing other points of view.

Additionally, as someone who chooses to engage with products built around groups of people acting out violent action, conflict, and fantasy warfare; it's not always easy to understand the points of view held by other members of the community.

Edit: To clean up some odd bits of grammar.
 
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Marandahir

Crown-Forester (he/him)
I like how Bloomburrow is using "Folk" for each of its 10 archetypal dual-colour types of animals, hereafter listed in WUBRG or Ravnica Guild order: Birdfolk, Ratfolk, Lizardfolk, Raccoonfolk, Rabbitfolk, Batfolk, Otterfolk, Squirrelfolk, Mousefolk, and Frogfolk. Presumably other Folk exist (we've seen some of them on a few cards) but they're rarer at least in Valley, the main "country" of this first card set featuring the plane.
 

jayoungr

Legend
Supporter
Not a one for one universal match, but people, heritage, and folk are all pretty darn close to that meaning.
"People" and "folk" are not too far off, though sometimes awkward because "people" is in casual speech interchangeable with "humans." But "heritage" doesn't work for me. I'm too used to it referring to the historical background of a single family and typically referring to their station in life--"I come from a peasant heritage"--or maybe their nation of origin, but not for any larger background group than a nation. Using it to replace "race" in game terms just sounds weird.
 

Marandahir

Crown-Forester (he/him)
I appreciate the response.

I suppose, from my own point of view, I am trying to understand what is considered "culturally correct" (for a lack of better words) when there is no (subjective) shared equity between two groups and trying to be more inclusive of one causes (subjective) harm to the other. (And all of that subjectively assumes that "equity" should be priority.)

From my own subjective point of view, I feel as though there comes a point at which becoming too beholden to avoiding subjective offense makes it very difficult to have a functional product.

FWIW, (and also from my own subjective point of view,) I sometimes find it offensive when other people feel it is their job to decide to be offended for me.

Years ago, I stopped going to rpg.net because the mods there held a particular point of view as to what the correct way of thinking for someone from my background ought to be; when I disagreed with that viewpoint, I was admonished. I found it a bit strange to have an authority figure explain to me that I was behaving and thinking in a way that they felt was not the approved way of thinking for someone of my own background.

I think (or at least I hope,) in that person's own mind, they felt they were doing the right thing. My point of view was that their attempt to "do right" was arguably more offensive than people who actually did/do intend to he offensive toward me. Trying to express that -even through PMs- lead to threats of moderation and a temporary ban. Eventually, I simply decided that I would prefer to no longer be a member of that community.

I understand not wanting to cause harm or anguish. Though, I'm not sure that I always understand how the choices made in pursuit of that endeavor are measured to be the correct ones. As such, I am interested in hearing other points of view.

Additionally, as someone who chooses to engage with products built around groups of people acting out violent action, conflict, and fantasy warfare; it's not always easy to understand the points of view held by other members of the community.

Edit: To clean up some odd bits of grammar.
It's all very tricky. None of us are perfect, and leading with humility, grace, and good intentions are what matter.
You seem to be going about it right.

In another thread I responded to Micah Sweet about the goal of D&D, and I think the goal of the game's makers is to be as big tent as possible in a large part because they presume that that will make them the most money – and retain the largest audience in their subscription services and buying more books, but in a larger sense, D&D is also the first point of contact most people have with TTRPGs because it's such a big name, so it's sort of locked into the big tent mentality the same way Megalodon was locked into hunting whales in a time of massive whale diversity. D&D's niche is that it isn't niche, as RPGs go. Other RPGs can corner markets on other niche perspectives and can have more controversial takes because they're oriented towards a smaller audience to begin with (as long as they don't drive away that smaller demographic).

So D&D wants to be as inclusive as possible as part of its strategy to go after the most players as possible. And I think that's both the economically sensible thing for Hasbro, but also the morally right strategy because it says "yes, you can be a part of this game too." The danger of this strategy is a sort of tyranny of the majority (or tyranny of fun as some have put it), but I think the benefits currently outweigh the risks. And when D&D does well, other TTRPGs do well in its coattails too, so if you don't love the choices D&D makes, other niche-er RPGs may scratch your itch, like LevelUp: Advanced 5E does for Micah.
 

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