America is reckoning with our culture and history of racism in the midst of massive protests against the killing of people of color. It's all too easy for people like me, a cisgender, heterosexual white man, to comfortably sit in a bubble of ignorance, forgetting about the systemic and cultural problems that continue to plague us. Systemic problems are complex and difficult to deal with, given how entrenched they are in our society, and while we can look to landmark moments in which those systems were partially dismantled, such as the elimination of slavery (with a big asterisk) with the Thirteenth Amendment and the elimination of explicit legal racial discrimination with the Civil Rights Act, the truth is that these problems are insidious and persistent, and require our vigilance to combat them.
Yet, even more complex and subtle is the way that our culture of racism has altered the way that we see the world. It's important to remember that even those with the best values - who believe in racial equality and the humanity within all people, regardless of where their ancestors came from and what they look like, racism still affects our worldviews.
This is a bigger topic to bite off than a single post in a gaming blog can chew, but I thought I'd mention some of the things that Wizards says they're doing to try to adjust the legacy of racism that D&D - even in its recent 5th Edition publications - has unconsciously perpetuated.
First, there are some clear problems with the vilification of entire races. Orcs and Drow, in particular, are mentioned as problematic, perhaps because of their prominence within the canon of D&D and fantasy in general (well, "dark elves" for Drow.) The drow portrayal as dark-skinned and also (maybe therefore) evil is a pretty obviously racist thing, but in a broader sense, the idea that an entire people are inherently evil because of their genetics is the broader racist idea. Wizards points to their recent Eberron and Wildemount settings as examples where Orcs and Drow respectively have more complex and nuanced cultures, but I think in general subverting the old "these people are all chaotic evil" tropes is a necessary change.
Even more flagrantly racist are depictions of human cultures in Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation (both of which I'm actually playing right now.) The Vistani, a mainstay of the Ravenloft setting, are very clearly based on the Romani people, who have historically been persecuted as outsiders and pariahs, and some of the tropes in that setting - such as the notion that they can place curses upon other people - are historic canards that have been used to justify their persecution. Tomb of Annihilation, in its portrayal of Chult, tries to give the black humans of that region a complex culture, but some of the basis of its history, inherited from earlier editions, still plays on tropes that carry over too much of our own world's history of imperial exploitation and misrepresentation of the culture. I remember when that book came out that there weren't any members on the creative team for that book that were black, which seemed like a baffling oversight.
Another element that I think is worth talking about is that they've addressed the inherent issue with racial bonuses to ability scores. Apparently, in a new publication, they'll outline new rules to base ability score bonuses to classes, rather than races. Not only do I think this will have a positive effect on gameplay, but it also allows the inter-species diversity of a D&D world to reflect the reality that, among humans, there has never been any confirmed link between racial background and any kind of ability like strength or intelligence. Doing away with penalties, such as removing the penalty for intelligence among orcs in the Eberron book, was a good start, but I think this broader approach is a great move.
The core, however, to making the game accessible to everyone, is the final goal outlined, which is to make a concerted effort to hire a more diverse team to work on the game. This, of course, is the marathon goal that can't be fixed in an instant, and requires a corporate culture shift. People of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and wouldn't you know it, how about some LGBTQ+ women of color, should be part of the making of this game that we all love, but beyond that, we need such people in positions of leadership. It's all too easy for a team to meet quotas on diversity and clap their hands and decide the job is done.
I love this game, and I want to feel that I can invite any friend I make into the myriad worlds that it opens up. It's been a safe place for me while I've dealt with some very difficult moments in my life. And I want that sense of belonging, of safety, and of excitement to be just as available to everyone.
I hope that these beginning steps lead to better representation within D&D, and I wish the team luck on implementing them. Certainly, mistakes will still happen, and I think all of us who wish to be allies need to be open to criticism. When we earnestly accept that criticism and make the effort to address the problems that have been pointed out, though, we find ourselves in a better place.
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