In just over 1 month's time, Wizards of the Coast will be releasing Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. It will be a supplementary book similar to Volo's Guide to Monsters, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes.
While Volo's and Mordenkeinen's focused primarily on lore and expanding the creatures used to kill your player's characters, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is expected to be similar to Xanathar's, in that it expands on rules, details, tools, tips, and some other features to supplement how Dungeon Masters and Players run Dungeons & Dragons 5E.
Many of the features described on Wizard's website seem like par for the course, such as more spells, sub-classes, and more rules. Other features, such as the idea of Magic Tattoos, have seen use and popularity from shows like Critical Role, in which many of the primary characters receive tattoos that benefit their stats in some form. Puzzles will also be discussed in the book, to which other books have only mentioned and suggested including puzzles in sessions.
Don't get me wrong when I say this: I'm reasonably excited for this book. However, I'm not overly enthusiastic about it either. So far, we haven't seen enough of what is included to really excite me. Xanathar's Guide dropped and touted expanding each class with a plethora of new sub-classes. They did, and it was awesome. But I haven't been teased with enough information to really get my feelers out for how well this book will benefit my table.
However, there is one detail that I'm glad to see: Customizable Origins.
Orgins & Race in D&D
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year, you'll know that the subject of "race" has been a pretty hot topic in the U.S., to the point that protests and movements have expanded past U.S. borders and overseas. In terms of Dungeons & Dragons, "playable races" are a selection of different species of humanoid you may choose in order to flesh out your character. Each player race comes with a basic description of culture and physical characteristics typical of your species, and a list of bonuses, abilities, and additions to your attribute scores. This is usually par for the course in regards to TTRPGs. However, Wizards has been called on by many in the player community for the presentation of race as problematic. The argument noting that some descriptions lean into stereotypes that are typically deemed lacking good taste.
The most prominent example is that original printings noted that Half-Orcs were somewhat dumb and usually not having the same conscious faculties as elves or dwarves. Because of some of the racial ties to Tolkien orcs, there's worry that subtle stereotypes can grow unhealthy viewpoints in real life circumstances. While major discussions around this topic happened in March, discussions are still happening around this idea, and if it poses a real issue or not. Another problem in discussion is the fact that player races have pre-established racial traits and attributes. The potential of issue is that these attributes play into more stereotypes, possibly portraying tribal, large races as strong but stupid, and sleek and slender races as intelligent and wise. There's worry that, again, these ideas on paper could subtly affect perceptions in real life too.
In response to social trends and movement from much of the community, Wizards released a statement of improving wording and presentation of diversity in D&D. While still some debate from the general D&D community as to how Wizards is handling this, part of this implementation has led to the Origins Customization in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
What are Customizable Origins?
While the book is yet unreleased, we get a glimpse into how Tasha's Cauldron of Everything implements this feature in the Adventurer's League Player's Guide Version 10.1. At the end of this guide in Appendix A, a guide is shown, giving players an idea into how players and DMs can break open new options for characters, and rely less on the attribute scores prescribed in racial descriptions in each game.
Customizable Origins, first, starts to change the word race into the word origin. Not only is the word less charged socially, but it's also slightly more accurate to the feeling the new rule describes.
Otherwise, Customizable Origins looks not to rewrite or overwrite the data created in previous and new books. Instead, it attempts to give players permission to make choices for attributes and proficiency. But what do we mean by giving permission? Well, just that, frankly.
The book pretty blandly states that in creating a character, if your character would typically gain +2 or +1 in one ability, you can opt to switch it to another ability of your choice. Plain and simple. There's also some guide on how to swap about proficient traits with each other, though specific abilities such as Stoneflesh from Goliaths are still only available to Goliaths.
This way, choosing a race still has some unique potency, but the free form nature of proficiency and attribute scores makes certain ideas less stereotypical.
While it's pretty simple, I'm actually really excited for this change. As a DM, I've had tons of times where players wanted to create a character in a certain way, but the stat bonuses didn't line up the way they wanted to. Yes it's min maxing, but it's also a small moment of "well that's disappointing" that can last a decent while. Frankly, I've been unofficially using these rule for my games for a long time now. It works well, as its just a simple but neat change. It doesn't necessarily seem like Wizards put a ton of work into making something genre breaking and unique with this rule... but I don't think they needed to. Functionally, it's good. It's not mind blowing or inspiring, but it works and feels natural.
We'll have to see what the full book has to offer, especially if there's more details on customizing character origins.