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There were only four races available for play in Men & Magic: dwarves, elves, humans, and hobbits. The artwork throughout the book was sparse, but what little art there was seemed curiously out of sync with later preconceptions of races. A picture of a bearded, squat warrior wielding an axe was labeled as a goblin. Another picture of a leather-jerkined bearded warrior with a sword in one hand was labeled as an elf.

All four could be fighting men, although dwarves were restricted to sixth level and elves and hobbits to fourth level. Humans and elves could be magic users, but elves were limited to eighth level. Only humans could be clerics. Since thieves weren’t introduced until later, hobbits were limited to fighting men.

The notion of “demi-human” level limits merits discussion, as Gygax emphatically believed that demi-human races needed to have inherent limitations to preserve the humanocentric experience. Gygax was against allowing elves to advance higher levels because removing those limitations might turn the game into a form of “comic book superheroes” (1987:51)—a curious accusation, since Chainmail featured “superhero” as a form of hero (Gygax and Perren 1971:30).

Dungeons & Dragons flip-flopped on role-playing non-humanoid races. In the original version of the game, players could play virtually anything, so long as the race started out weak at first level (Gygax 1974:8). In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax was against it, citing that the more alien races couldn’t be role-played properly (1987:33). By the third edition, there were over 135 possible player character races (Carter 2007:16).

Dungeons & Dragons does not define race as the word is used in modern parlance. In fact, human racial diversity wasn’t present for quite some time. Chris Van Dyke in Race in Dungeons & Dragons explained that:

humans are the normative race, and given the Anglo-centric depiction of human culture in the game, humans can be interpreted as representing “white people.” They are “normal,” while all other races, whether good or evil, are to some extent “exotic,” and otherized [2010].

This Eurocentric focus has its roots in the source material, specifically Tolkien’s work, which focused on creating a European mythology (Gehl 2007:258). Lack of racial diversity was reinforced by the illustrations. Van Dyke noted that of the hundreds of illustrations depicting adventurers in the first edition and second edition Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, there were no nonwhite adventurers. It was not until the third edition that other ethnicities were mentioned. Of the 80 illustrations and 982 pages total in the two books, only one black female was portrayed (Ember, the monk). Matthew Sernett touched on the fourth edition’s attempt to correct this lack of racial diversity in Races and Classes (Carter 2007:20).

The fourth edition set out to remove the humanocentric bias of the racial descriptions. Humanity had no obvious weakness, so the developers settled on “corruptibility.” Humans are vulnerable to temptation, to the lust for power, and to greed. Humanity can be noble or corrupt, its most shining example or its own worst enemy—in other words, all the characteristics attributed to humans in The Lord of the Rings.

DRAGONBORN • During the development of the fourth edition, the designers realized that there were several dragonhumanoid analogues. Looking to create a new unique race that would reflect the latest fantasy trends, the fourth edition introduced the Dragonborn.

Dragonborn have a long heritage in Draconians from Dragonlance, who were uniformly evil. They first appeared in the Dragons of Despair module (1984) for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as “dragonmen.” The second edition featured rules on adding dragons as a race, but not without significant rule bending. As James Wyatt pointed out (Carter 2007:26) early Dungeons & Dragons had the word “dragon” in it but you couldn’t play one.

TIEFLINGS • Half-human, half-demon offspring are a staple of