Sales Team: "We're not ready for 6e, this edition is selling like hotcakes!"
Orcs: 😒
Drow: 🙄
Vistani: 🤨#dnd
— ThinkDM.org (@ThinkingDM) June 12, 2020
Look at the treatment orcs received in Eberron and Exandria. Dropped the Intelligence debuff and the evil alignment, with a more acceptable narrative.
It’s a start, but there’s a fair argument for gutting the entire race system.
Who cares what the confederates think? The orcs of Eberron and Wildemount reflect where our hearts are and indicate where we’re heading.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 12, 2020
I hate to be “that guy”, but what about Drow, Vistani, and the other troublesome races and cultures in Forgotten Realms (like the Gur, another Roma-inspired race)?
Things don’t change over night, but are these on the radar? The drow, Vistani, and many other folk in the game are on our radar. The same spirit that motivated our portrayal of orcs in Eberron is animating our work on all these peoples.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 12, 2020
Good. These problems need to be addressed. The variant features UA could have a sequel that includes notes that could rectify some of the problems and help move 5e in a better direction. Addressing these issues is vital to us. Eberron and Wildemount are the first of multiple books that will face these issues head on and will do so from multiple angles.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 12, 2020
I’m happy to hear that you are taking a serious look at this. Do you feel that you can achieve this within the context of Forgotten Realms, given how establised that world’s lore is, or would you need to establish a new setting to do this? Thankfully, the core setting of D&D is the multiverse, with its multitude of worlds. We can tell so many different stories, with different perspectives, in each world. And when we return to a world like FR, stories can evolve. In short, even the older worlds can improve.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 12, 2020
I could see gnolls being treated differently in other worlds, particularly when they’re a playable race. The idea that they’re spawned hyenas who fed on demon-touched rotten meat feels like they’re in a different class than drow, orcs, goblins and the like. Same with minotaurs. Internally, we feel that the gnolls in the MM are mistyped. Given their story, they should be fiends, not humanoids.
I agree. Any creature with the Humanoid type should have the full capacity to be any alignmnet, i.e., they should have free will and souls. Gnolls… the way they are described, do not. Having them be minor demons would clear a lot of this up. In contrast, the gnolls of Eberron are humanoids, a people with moral and cultural expansiveness.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 12, 2020
You just described our team's perspective exactly.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 12, 2020
Any possibility of going forward not ascribing alignment to humanoid creatures (in statblocks or in adventure text)?
This has always been my internal policy. To be humanoid defines you as being capable of aligning in any capacity. The NPC appendix of the Monster Manual reflects our intent for all humanoids: they can be any alignment. We are making the rest of our stat blocks reflect that intent going forward.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 12, 2020