Thread by @JesseHeinig

Hey @Wizards_DnD players, 𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘢'𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 is finally here, and with it the new rules about changing up ability score modifiers, languages, and skills that are connected with race in the core book. Let's chat!

(cw: bigotry)

(A thread)

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D&D rarely does extradiegetic text. Going back to 1st edition there are some places where Gygax writes essay-form analysis of what constitutes good play and gives advice about successful adventuring...

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... but by and large, the game rarely has text explaining "Here's WHY this rule exists" or "You may want to do X, instead of Y, depending on the goals for your game." (Monte Cook talked about this in an interview where he said their original goal was to...

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... make 3e work like 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘤, so players felt smart for figuring things out on their own, which has other problems I won't get into here.)

So let's talk about why 𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘢'𝘴 rules are important.

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First things first: If you're one of the bros (and it's almost always old white dudes) who thinks "HAH racism in D&D isn't a thing! That's just SJW pandering/virtue signalling/political correctness," you probably won't get anything out of this thread.

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Second, I'm a white hetero cis dude talking about RPGs on the internet. You should probably follow folks who write about social problems in gaming from authoritative sources, like @cypheroftyr, @deathbybadger, @OrionDBlack, @CriticalBard, @danielhkwan, and @VioletRiotGames.

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Ok! So 𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘢'𝘴 new rules address a long-standing problem of D&D: Not only does the game use mythology of magic, gods, and monsters, but it also includes 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 myths, like the myth of the unexplored wilderness, or the myth of "races" with distinct characteristics.

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"But orcs aren't real so racism against them isn't real!" comes the inevitable cry. The problem is that 𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘪𝘨𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭. Ideas that you use as a framework in a game reinforce and re-create ideas that reflect upon the real world.

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"Live long and prosper."
"May the Force be with you."
"Witness me!"

These lines come from stories that are fictional. They aren't real events. But they all have stories that talk about real ideas, and they give us real feelings.

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Almost everyone can think of a character or scene from a book or movie that stuck with them, that made them have strong feelings, that inspired them with an idea, or encouraged them to see the character as a role model. The same is true in RPGs.

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So when the game says "Here is a group of people who talk, think, live, and function among other people, but they are always tough, stupid, evil, and savage," the game is reinforcing these racist ideas. It's using these ideas to create those memorable moments.

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𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘢'𝘴 takes a stab at removing this by saying "Maybe in your world this isn't true. Maybe in your world orcs are just a different kind of people, and they aren't always evil. Maybe they have different cultural values."

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Leaving aside whether this goes far enough in addressing D&D's long-standing problems, this is an attempt to acknowledge that saying "Hey, there are groups of people that we can lump into a 'race' and describe as inferior" is bad!

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Old-timers of the hobby will remember 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴, the well-known module in which your team forges out from a small stronghold to smash the humanoids living in caves in the hills nearby. Why? Well, because they're evil!

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This is a recreation of settler mythology: The idea that past "civilization" is a "wilderness" that is open for the taking, that nobody is living out there, and if you encounter someone, well they're certainly evil savages and you can kill them without losing any sleep.

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So D&D is recreating 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘴 and wrapping them up in adventure fiction. This means that it's conflating your wonderful, daring, heroic experiences with ideas that descend from various problematic ideas in our own world.

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Imagine for a moment (you're a roleplayer, shouldn't be hard) that you're, say, a Black person living in America. Every day you face racism in both overt and subtle ways, whether it's security guards following you around the store or people saying "You're so well-spoken!"

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You come home after a long day and you just wanna play a game with friends and the game says "By the way, there's a whole group of people who are subhuman, monstrous, evil by nature, really strong so they can do lots of hard work, but not very smart. Malicious savages."

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That's the exact same way that white supremacists describe Black people. It's the same myth that was used by slave-kidnappers to "justify" ownership of Black humans. You can't even get away from this crap in your entertainment!

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D&D also has a long tradition of sharing the fantasy art trope of the "hapless princess" or "seductive demoness," both of which lean into sexism—the characters exist just to satisfy men who consume the media—and homophobia, because it's always about what hetero men want.

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𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘢'𝘴 is a small step in saying "These ideas are bad, and we shouldn't encourage them." Whether you agree with their implementation, this is a step toward making D&D games less troubled.

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Discussion of the game systems behind this is a topic for another time. For now, just chew on the fact that D&D has a long legacy of ideas cribbed from racism, sexism, and homophobia. We ought to do better, because everyone deserves a chance to just enjoy the game.

~Fin~