Dungeons & Dragons rolls the dice with new rules

While solving quests in Dungeons & Dragons, the gamers who role-play as elves, orcs and halflings rely on the abilities and personalities of their custom-made characters, whose innate charisma and strength are as crucial to success as the rolls of 20-sided dice.

That is why the game’s first significant rule changes in a decade, which became official this fall as it celebrated its 50th anniversary, reverberated through the Dungeons & Dragons community and beyond. They prompted praise and disdain at game tables everywhere, along with YouTube harangues and irritated social media posts from Elon Musk.

“Races” are now “species.” Some character traits have been divorced from biological identity; a mountain dwarf is no longer inherently brawny and durable, a high elf no longer intelligent and dexterous by definition.

And Wizards of the Coast, the Dungeons & Dragons publisher owned by Hasbro, has endorsed a trend throughout role-playing games in which players are empowered to halt the proceedings if they ever feel uncomfortable.

“What they’re trying to do here is put up a signal flare, to not only current players but potential future players, that this game is a safe, inclusive, thoughtful and sensitive approach to fantasy storytelling,” said Ryan Lessard, a writer and frequent Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master.

The changes have exposed a rift among D&D players, a group as passionate as its pursuit is esoteric, becoming part of the broader cultural debate about how to balance principles like inclusivity and accessibility with history and tradition.

Robert Kuntz, an award-winning game designer who frequently collaborated with Gary Gygax, a co-creator of D&D, said he disliked Wizards of the Coast’s efforts to legislate from above rather than provide room for dungeon masters — the game’s ringleaders and referees — to tailor their individual campaigns.

“It’s an unnecessary thing,” he said. “It attempts to play into something that I’m not sure is even worthy of addressing, as if the word ‘race’ is bad.”

The changes may fit into the corporate world’s pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion, but they are also part of a financial strategy for Wizards of the Coast.

Players responded tepidly to the fourth edition of D&D in 2008, when the game was more punchline than blockbuster movie premise.

“The D&D audience was shrinking,” said Jeremy Crawford, the game’s lead rules designer. “The game was becoming so tailored to just one way of playing that it was not feeling as inviting as we knew the game could be.”

Players desired greater leeway in creating their characters, Wizards of the Coast executives said in defense of the new rules. The “2024 Player’s Handbook” is the fastest-selling publication in company history, it said, and its new guide for dungeon masters already is in reprints.

In addition to its species, each character is assigned a class such as bard, druid, rogue or wizard. During quests, the abilities and corresponding skills of characters manifest in ways that can complement or undermine one another.

A bard typically has a leg up when it comes to charisma, one of the game’s core ability scores. When his party finds itself negotiating with a roving gang of mercenaries, the bonus points he can add to the roll of a 20-sided die — thanks to his gift of gab — can win the mercenaries’ allegiance.

Players who are frustrated by the recent revisions argue that the innate characteristics of a species gave the game part of its allure.

“All the species are becoming humans with decorations,” lamented Devin Cutler, a veteran gamer from New Hampshire.