I started my D&D journey with Mentzer’s red box Basic Set in the mid-80s. By this time, D&D had become quite sanitised, and the quasi-medieval setting had taken over from the early gonzo-rich Sword & Sorcery stylings. In this set, the idea of separate race and class was nowhere to be found. It had been simplified so that new players could choose to be a Halfling, but not a Halfling Thief, for example.

A Sensitive Topic

I’m not one of those old players with intractable ideas on race in fantasy games. It’s fantasy, after all, so people can do whatever they like at their own tables. But I understand the sensitivities around racial issues, and I have no problem at all with players wanting to use Species over Race as a term. I still think that Tunnels & Trolls got it right in the 70s when Kindred was used in place of Race during character creation. Yet another reason that T&T remains an early trailblazer.

Right from the beginning, in those earliest editions of 1974 style D&D, race was separate from class. Gygax was always pretty hot on players choosing humans over non-humans, as he’d grown up with human-centric Sword & Sorcery pulp classics, like Conan. So, he chose to level cap the non-humans and restrict the choice of class. It was a balancing mechanism in the game just in case players all wanted to create non-human characters to take advantage of their special abilities.

Of course, Gary Gygax was what some people would call a biological determinist – the idea that genes are the primary driver of ability, talent, capacity, and behaviour. He was also a committed Christian, so the concept of good and evil, and the resulting binaries in the game, was a path well-trod for him. Thus, Class is a concept rooted in the idea that characters in the fantasy world are bound by some force that divides them into types.

Orcs, of course, have long been the subject of interrogations into the way in which D&D not only positions good and evil, but also the ways in which the game encourages the mindless slaughter of sentient beings who are evil by nature. In this vision, characters ridding the civilized world of such an evil makes perfect sense. It’s also the way I grew up understanding D&D and forms the basis for so much adventuring. There’s no inherent right or wrong here, just competing ideas and themes that create an experience. This also means that I have no problem with other people taking the game and making it into something they feel more comfortable with.

The Science

For those who would prefer that their version of the game be based on scientific principles, one should really look to modern science for answers around whether humans can be distinctly divided into races. The clear answer is: no. There’s simply not enough genetic diversity to make a convincing argument at the biological level for race, as humans are all too similar in this department for there to be simple distinctions. In this sense, the concept of race can only be understood as a social construct that allows people to classify others for their own purposes – often, as a way to make a complex world simpler to understand.

As for Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings? Are they related somehow and kin to each other? Or are they entirely distinct species where they should be far more genetically distinct from each other? Maybe they’ve been magically birthed, thus creating the Deus ex Machina to resolve any arguments over race?

So, one might see Elves as a distinct genetic species, or even kin to humans or Dwarfs, depending on the cosmology of that world – none of which poses an issue in a fantasy game, but rather only poses a problem when gaming groups suggest that their way is the best and only way. It isn’t inherently wrong to suggest that Orcs possess more physical power than humans, but it’s wrong-headed to see the world in such absolutes so that no variation is permitted.

But, as I said earlier, people can do whatever they want at their own tables. It’s a fantasy game and in that respect, anything goes! It’s just that we should also remain unsurprised if another table decides to do things differently to accommodate understandable sensitivities around the topic.

What Makes Race as Class Interesting?

But I ramble! Those thoughts are for a much lengthier post! Whether one calls it Species as Class, Race as Class, or Kindred as Class, there are some things I like about this flavour over the usual separation of Race and Class in the usual versions of the game:

• Simplicity: Is it not simpler to choose a single Class for your character? You’re no longer an Elf Fighter/Magic User, you’re just an Elf with cool powers.
• Flavour: Why would human career options even apply to Elves who can live for hundreds of years? Why would an Elf or a Dwarf bother themselves with the jobs, careers, and bothersome titles of humans? Being an Elf or a Halfling means that you’re different to those smelly humans. You have your own flavour and you own it!
• Character creation: Characters are also easier and quicker to create. You’re no longer having to choose to be something that specialises in some vaguely defined other thing, with all of the extended rules that entails.

And for me, it makes nostalgic sense because I grew up with Mentzer’s Basic Set set, where it was integral to the experience.