Dungeons & Dragons Clarifies Plans for Half-Elves and Mixed Parentages in One D&D

No, Dungeons & Dragons is not getting rid of half-elves, despite messaging coming out of a Content Creator's Summit held at Wizards of the Coast headquarters this week. Today, Wizards of the Coast released a brief statement addressing a "controversy" involving the intention to move away from mechanics that singled out characters with mixed parentages of different species, such as half-elves and half-orcs. "Options for creating characters descended from more than one species are not being removed from Dungeons & Dragons," said a brief statement posted on Twitter. "Proposed adjustments to character origins have been open to the community since August 2022 and will be revised further." 

Dungeons & Dragons had to clarify their intent for an upcoming rules revision being released in 2024 after Wizards of the Coast held a Content Creator's Summit to address concerns from the community about the future of the game. During the summit, D&D lead rules designer spoke about moving away from the idea of character creation options that use the phrase "half" to describe their heritage. "Frankly, we are not comfortable, and haven't been for years with any of the options that start with 'half'," Crawford said according to a recap of the event by attendee Daniel Kwan. "The half construction is inherently racist so we simply aren't going to include it in the new Player's Handbook. If someone wants to play those character options, they'll still be in D&D Beyond. They'll still be in the 2014 Player's Handbook." Several websites latched onto the "inherently racist" wording of Crawford's quote, leading to the growing controversy. 

Crawford's comments are in line with the first One D&D playtest released back in August 2022, which included rules for playing as elves and orcs, but not half-elves or half-orcs. Instead, the playtest included a rulebox explaining how to create a character with parents of two different species, with players choosing a height, averaging the lifespans, and then using the character creation rules connected to the species of one of the character's parents. That approach was also criticized for functionally erasing characters of mixed heritages by forcing players to choose between the traits of one parent of another. Wizards pointed to these proposed changes in their statement and clarified that they would be revised further based on feedback from players.