‘Dungeons & Dragons’ To Replace “Inherently Racist” Half-Species System With New “Children Of Different Humanoid Kinds” Mechanic
Following the uproar sparked by the publisher’s recent declaration that they would be moving to eliminate the “inherently racist” concept of Half- species from Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast has clarified that they are not wholesale removing a player’s ability to play a mixed-species character, but rather – at least at current – planning to replace it with a new “children of different humanoid kinds” mechanic.
The popular tabletop publisher first declared their intention to alter Dungeons & Dragons’ treatment of Half- species during their recent D&D Creator Summit, an event hosted by physically and virtually wherein WotC provided various game developers and related content creators with a sneak peek at the game’s future direction.
Therein, lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford revealed (as directly quoted by both tabletop designer Beth Rimmels and independent content creator Daniel Kwan) that the entire concept of Half- species would soon be phased out of D&D due to WotC’s belief that the category’s entire existence was ‘problematic’.
“Frankly, we are not comfortable, and haven’t been for years with any of the options that start with ‘Half’,” Crawford explained. “The half construction is inherently racist so we simply aren’t going to include it in the new Player’s Handbook.”
Offering one caveat, the designer then assured players that despite the Half- species’ official removal from the Player’s Handbook, “If someone wants to play those character options, they’ll still be in D&D Beyond [and] they’ll still be in the 2014 Player’s Handbook.”
Soon after the event, Crawford’s announcement spread like wildfire across social media, as many baffled players understandably took his exact wording to mean that WotC would be eliminating all mixed race mechanics from the game.
In light of this outrage, WotC took to the official D&D Beyond Twitter account on April 6th to clarify that “Options for creating characters descended from more than one species are not being removed from Dungeons & Dragons,” but rather being replaced with a new set of “proposed adjustments to character origins”.
The currently-being-tested adjustments, as seen in the publisher’s official materials, will apparently see the existence of Half-species replaced with a new system known as “Children of Different Humanoid Kinds”.
Per this new system, rather than creating characters whose mixed lineage grants them some unique appearances, traits, and abilities, players will now simply base their character’s stats on only one of their parent races, with the only elements actually affected by a character being biracial are their appearances and natural lifespans.
“If you’d like to play the child of such a wondrous pairing, choose two Race options that are Humanoid to represent your parents,” reads the current ruleset. “Then determine which of those Race options provides your game traits: Size, Speed, and special traits. You can then mix and match visual characteristics.”
“Finally, determine the average of the two options’ Life Span traits to figure out how long your character might live,” concludes the very basic instructions for WotC’s new system.
Notably, despite taking the time to offer this clarification on D&D’s new rules, WotC yet to offer any reasoning as to why the concept of ‘Half-‘ species is, as Crawford claims, “inherently racist”.
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