For years, Dungeons & Dragons players started off their epic fantasy campaigns by choosing a race and a class. For races, think "biology," like human, elf, halfling, or dwarf. For classes, think "job," like fighter, wizard, rogue, or cleric. But in the first significant change to the rules of the classic role-playing game in 10 years, this fall, "race" was changed to "species"—and that change, along with other rule alterations, has divided players, the New York Times reports. "It's an unnecessary thing," says one game designer of the change to "species." "It attempts to play into something that I'm not sure is even worthy of addressing, as if the word 'race' is bad."
It goes even deeper than that—the old "races" had innate traits associated with them; high elves, for example, would be inherently intelligent and nimble. But in the new rules, some of those traits are now completely separate from the biological makeup of a particular character. "All the species are becoming humans with decorations," says one longtime gamer. Also among the changes are guidelines to assure players aren't exposed to any topics they'd prefer to avoid during gameplay (for example, sexual violence or substance abuse), and that addition prompted even Elon Musk to weigh in, posting, "How much is Hasbro?" on X in response to a D&D designer's comment about the update. (See the Times' full story for much more.)
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