Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D’s many other playable folk.

We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. Wizards of the Coast specifically addressed these two groups in laying out recent and future changes to D&D products: In a blog post published on June 17 titled “ Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons,” Wizards of the Coast said that depicting a diverse array of human beings - beyond “fantasy versions of northern Europeans” - is “one of the explicit design goals of 5th edition D&D.” The developers noted that while they want to feature characters “who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs,” the game still contains problematic depictions of fantasy races.Īmong these races are the orcs, who are often characterized as a savage horde of creatures who lust for battle, and the drow, an evil dark-skinned subrace of elves who dwell in a subterranean matriarchy. Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast has acknowledged the existence of racist stereotypes in its sourcebooks, and pledged to make changes to ameliorate the issue.

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