By Kelsey Paige Mason
In a shareholder ‘fireside chat’ with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks (former president of Wizards of the Coast from 2016-2022), and Cynthia Williams, the current CEO and president of WotC, both parties outlined Wizards’ four-quadrant strategy for investment growth with D&D: offering blockbuster entertainment, AAA high-end gaming, products for tabletop gamers, and products for the more casual fan.[1] Williams begins her response about Dungeons and Dragons by saying, ‘D&D has never been more popular, and we have really great fans and incredible engagement, but the first thing I saw with it is the brand is really under monetized.’[2] From their new acquisition of D&D Beyond giving them market insights into personal games,[3] to creating an environment which encourages ‘recurrent spending,’ much like paid DLCs and pay-to-play models of digital games,[4] Wizards is working towards taking advantage of D&D’s 50-year legacy but also its position as ‘a cultural phenomenon right now.’[5] By ‘engaging and surrounding the consumer’[6] with game products, entertainment media, and personal accessories and collectables, Wizards is building a unified lifestyle brand, under the codename One D&D. Wizards has already seen the success of D&D becoming a ‘generic trademark,’ where Dungeons and Dragons has colloquially become the shorthand or stand-in for the genre of tabletop roleplaying games. With more brand recognition than their most profitable property, Magic: The Gathering,[7] Wizards is working to expand beyond manufacturing simply TTRPG ‘products,’ and instead capitalize on fandom in all its forms – from film and video games to actual play performances[8] and lifestyle accessories.
While the shareholder seminar focused on how to increase spending opportunities for consumers to increase profits, WotC’s outward facing PR has instead – since at least 2014 – marketed the D&D lifestyle as a community, one which sees Wizards’ products as secondary to fostering a community of players and game masters (GMs). In the opening pages of the 5th Edition Player’s Handbook, Mike Mearls writes, ‘Above all else, D&D is yours.’[9] After the recent controversy with proposed replacement of the Open Gaming License (OGL), Kyle Brink echoed a more sheepish form of this sentiment, saying, regardless of whether the community trusts Wizards again or not, “either way, play your game with your friends. You don’t need to have [Wizards] at the table if you don’t want to. You know, your game is for you. We’ll make stuff for it, and if you want it, we’ll be over here making it. You can come get it. But, honestly, we should not be messing up your game. You should be playing your game.’[10] Statements put out by Wizards, Dungeons and Dragons, and D&D Beyond often invoke the community, while often simultaneously diminishing their own role in shaping that community. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) is actively and aggressively working towards, not just strengthening Dungeons and Dragons as a brand, but more importantly, pushing towards greater monetization of Dungeons and Dragons as a lifestyle. The first part of my work in this chapter is an analysis of published game materials, public statements, and recent events since Wizards of the Coast’s commitment to diversity in 2020.
Ultimately, this work aims to uncover what benefits are afforded to Wizards as a result of their push towards diversity and inclusion as part of rebranding and how this commitment allows greater control over reconciling D&D’s problematic history with monetization plans for the future. This reconciliation, tied with a unification and tightening of the ‘community’ of D&D fans, works more towards the security of D&D’s brand than as a platform for political progressivism. While there should not be any expectation for social change emerging out of a multi-million dollar corporation, the importance of my chapter’s intervention is to demonstrate how Wizards has used the language of social justice and progressivism to create an appearance of a utopian D&D community. My focus in analyzing WotC and D&D is not whether WotC’s revisions of game materials to move away from their racist, sexist, and ableist origins are beneficial to the brand. Rather, I investigate whether these utopian moves are demonstrably present in D&D products, in WotC as a workplace, and in the types of social relationships the game promotes.
Just Make-Believe: Neutral Isn’t Just an Alignment
This is make-believe. And nobody’s murdered. And there’s no violence there. I mean. . . To use an analogy with another game, who is bankrupted by losing a game of Monopoly? Nobody is. Because the money is make-believe, the property is make-believe, and the bankruptcy is make-believe . . . Well, I again have to go back and say there is no link. This is. . . except perhaps in the mind of those people who are looking desperately for any other cause than perhaps their own failure as a parent. And further, anything can be abused. Are we going to try to go around and say, “This chair could be used by a violent person to strike another person?” Therefore, it should have a warning label on it saying, “Caution: This can be used to assault you with.”
Gary Gygax, 60 Minutes Interview, 1985.
In 1985, Gary Gygax and the TSR company were put in the spotlight by 60 Minutes. Dungeons and Dragons was presented as the violent link contributing to a group of children and teens who had committed suicide and murder. In Gygax’s interview, he defends D&D as “make-believe” and argues that it is akin to Monopoly.[11] Because of its cultural capital in America and the nostalgia around it, Monopoly assumes a kind of neutrality, despite the game’s advocacy of conservative, capitalist values.[12] Hasbro’s dips into politically progressive topics only reinforce this conservatism: variations like Monopoly Socialism, Ms. Monopoly, and Monopoly for Millennials don’t alter the basic nature of the game, but do add some right-wing satire. Now, while this chapter is not about Monopoly, Gygax’s calling on Monopoly as an anecdotal defense of D&D is a place for us to start to recognize when “neutrality” is assumed or directly invoked. This brief discussion will address moments when “it’s just a game” is used to support continued discriminatory practices in tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), examples of how D&D’s current company, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), performs political progressivism and for what rhetorical advantage, and the intersections between this discussion and utopian practice.
Downplaying D&D as “just a game” as a form of defense was not only a strategy for Gygax, but as this chapter will address, has continued to be the basis of arguments for players, GMs, and WotC. In conservative circles of fans and players, the same excuse is paired with arguments against ‘bringing politics into the game,’ by Wizards appealing to players who don’t have nostalgia for racist settings like Al-Qadim and Oriental Adventures. While Gygax’s comments position D&D firmly in the realm of “make-believe,” other celebrations of the game applaud its realism: ‘for it is certainly make-believe, yet it is so interesting, so challenging, so mind-unleashing that it comes near reality.’[13] Dungeons and Dragons’ history is speckled with these oscillations between viewing the game as niche and childish, endangering religious conservatism through Satanic rituals, leading to incel crises and condoned misogyny,[14] contributing positively to educational environments,[15] and offering therapeutic results through empowerment and constructive roleplay.[16] Although the truth lies somewhere in-between, where the discourse of play, performance, and practice intersect, Gygax’s argument in the 60 Minutes interview only focuses on the absurdity of the accusations. Eager to distances himself – and D&D – from any fault, he instead places responsibility upon individuals, arguing that “anything can be abused.”
Thirty-eight years later, Wizards of the Coast faced a new controversy with their brand, one which both sought to distance the game from “hateful and discriminatory products” and position themselves as no longer neutral arbiters of game products.[17] With catalysts such as NuTSR’s Star Frontiers: New Genesis playtest,[18] Wizards has come to the realization that “anything can be abused” also means their own brand and bottom line could be affected; instead of holding onto Gygax’s original sentiment of make-believe, Dungeons and Dragons, especially since their commitments to diversity (post the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests),[19] has included language, rules, character designs, and revisions to earlier game materials which are more progressive. Despite original assertions of neutrality, this shift towards more inclusive and diverse writing practices demonstrates there was something to move awayfrom, and that something certainly was not aligned neutral.[20]
Roleplaying Radical Imagining and D&D’s Not-So-Secret History
Wizards of the Coast has recently started releasing playtest materials for One D&D, their “codename for the next generation of D&D,” which has already shown a continuation of the character creation options introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (2020) as well as an unexpected move away from the use of the term “race.”[21] While playtest materials up to the writing of this chapter have been either largely cosmetic or incorporating rules which were already accepted in many home games (such as feats at level one),[22] these tweaks and adjustments have been reflective of WotC’s plans. All of the media around One D&D has reinforced two main initiatives: the new generation builds on 5e and will feature updated core rulebooks, but new materials will be backwards compatible and reflect an updating of 5e, rather than being a new edition.[23] As the industry leader in terms of sheer profits, Dungeons and Dragons also has the opportunity to be the model for tabletop games, not just in terms of game mechanics, but in terms of their commitments to diversity. The work of scholars like Ben Riggs have uncovered the ‘secret histories’ of Wizards of the Coast and D&D, recent field-changing events — such as Wizards’ plans for One D&D and virtual tabletop systems (VTT), as well as the upheaval and mass exodus from Dungeons and Dragons due to Wizards’ plans, and subsequent retractions, regarding the Open Game License (OGL) — will need new scholarly attention. As WotC tries to build its own lifestyle brand which emphasizes ‘the community,’ through the convergence of all gaming materials in a digital ecosystem, a study of utopianism provides us a fresh perspective of Wizards’ attempt to separate from the brand’s not-so-secret history.
Nonetheless, a good starting point is to think about the early influences on D&D and therefore on tabletop roleplaying more generally. D&D has a clear lineage of source texts which inspire and support its settings and gameplay.[24] Gygax indicates in the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide that his most immediate inspiration came from the works of seven white men, Robert E. Howard (Conan), Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and Gray Mouser), H. P. Lovecraft, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Jack Vance, and A. Merritt.[25] There are clear connections also to Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.[26] As D&D developed as a brand, character options, settings, and rules also were built out of the worlds of Gygax’sGreyhawk, Weis and Hickman’s Dragonlance, and R.A. Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms.[27] Antero Garcia’s article, “Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons” addresses how the racist and sexist historical context in which D&D was created – by a group of white, midwestern cis men – not only becomes inscribed in the content of adventure modules or flavor text, but that it becomes integral to D&D’s rules and systems. When considering utopian possibilities for TTRPGs, but specifically, for the future of D&D, Cecilia D’Anastasio argues Dungeons and Dragons must grapple with its troubling history of fantasy tropes, racial essentialism, and white supremacist and eugenic violence. D’Anastasio quotes the 1978 Advanced D&D rulebook, “‘Races are given advantages or limits mainly because the whole character of the game would be drastically altered if it were otherwise,’” and comments: “That bears repeating: To undo the racial essentialism of D&D would drastically alter the character of the game. Not the mechanics. Not the aesthetics. The character.”[28]
In the most recent discussion of One D&D’s move away from “race,” the blogpost by DND Beyond Staff addresses how “race” is problematic and has fostered “prejudiced links between real world people and the fantasy peoples of D&D worlds.”[29] Instead, Wizards proposed “species” as a replacement for the term (after “close coordination with multiple outside cultural consultants”), and regardless of whether species becomes the new category for character creation, they are committed to “mov[ing] on from using the term ‘race’ everywhere in One D&D, and [they] do not intend to return to that term.”[30] However, critiques of the One D&D playtests call into question whether Wizards’ term-shift and ability score rules are more aesthetic or if they strike at the “character” of the game.[31] Even before the announcement that One D&D would remove the term “race” from future game materials, public scholars, game designers, and TTRPG influencers contributed their thoughts to Linda Codega’s article, “Why Race is Still a Problem in Dungeons and Dragons.” Many spoke to the racist legacies of the game, racial coding in game materials, and how game rules reinforce prejudiced assumptions (ex. “The Gladiator background can speak ‘orcish’ as a skill and gains ‘Savage Attacker’ as a feat. ‘You don’t have to dig very deep to see how bad that is’”).[32] Additionally, One D&D drew further attention to their revisions of mixed-race characters; before, the critique of D&D’s descriptions of half-elves and half-orcs focused on the fantasy trope of characters with mixed-race heritages being born from violent, sexual assault. The playtest instead attributed mixed-race heritages as being “wonderous pairing[s]” and being the result of “magical workings of the multiverse.”[33] As Rue V. Dickey and Isa argued, not only does the “Children of Different Humanoid Kinds” sidebar reinforce stereotypes, including that mixed-race people must “feel completely isolated from a part of their cultural background” or that they are “exotic. . . explicitly because of their heritage,”[34] but Wizards reinforces these stereotypes through the game mechanics by limiting players to choose between which of their two “Race options provides your game traits.”[35] While Codega’s article highlights how some of the contributors see a way forward for Wizards, many – like D’Anastasio – are less optimistic about changing D&D’s ‘character.’
Why the Nineteenth Century: Wells’ Little Wars and the Golden Age
While many histories of TTRPGs begin with Dungeons and Dragons as the first, mainstream TTRPG, tabletop roleplaying games include more than rolling polyhedral dice and fighting monsters in a fantasy setting. In part, the origin of TTRPGs comes from wargames, which were simulations where players typically adopted the roles of two opposing armies or kingdoms and, using paper, miniatures, figures, and tokens, played out military engagements. The initial connection, then, between nineteenth-century utopias, wargames, and contemporary discussions of TTRPGs comes from one notable figure: H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells wrote Little Wars as a rulebook and guide for wargaming. The book had steps to playing with army, cavalry, and artillery toys, and the pictures included in the guide featured miniature orientations and dioramas.
As Giaime Alonge explains in “Playing the Nazis: Political Implications in Analog Wargames,” “H.G. Wells, both a socialist and wargamer, was aware of the politically slippery nature of his hobby. In his Little Wars (1913), one of the very first rulebooks for miniature wargame ever published, Wells somehow tries to ‘calm his conscience’, saying that his game can help people to grasp the horrors of war. His message is essentially: ‘Do not make war, play it.’”[36] The rules for Dungeons and Dragons originated from a game called Chainmail, co-developed by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Gygax and Perren, however, were initially inspired by a wargame they played at Gen Con called Siege of Bodenburg, designed by Henry Bodenstedt, and the rest is history.[37]While Dungeons and Dragons largely dominated the 1970s and 1980s, game systems started to more strongly diversify and move away from wargaming origins starting in the 1980s. However, Wells’ contribution to the culture and popularity of wargaming with Little Wars continues to be felt, even in contemporary discussions around TTRPGs.[38]
Where a Golden Age for TTRPGs is happening now,[39] with the proliferation of actual play performances and the popularity of and subsequent mass exodus from Dungeons and Dragons’ 5e, utopianism has not enjoyed such a resurgence. In fact, since the twentieth century, dystopian fiction has grown in popularity while mainstream utopian fiction has faltered. Although Sir Thomas More’s Utopia in the sixteenth century marks the first usage of the term, it was not until the nineteenth century when utopia came to be used to describe the fictional genre. The nineteenth century is one of the most active periods in utopianism and sets the stage for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ dystopian explosion; as Kenneth Roemer argues, ‘If the nineteenth century was not the Golden Age of utopianism, it was certainly a golden age.’[40] This golden age not only extends to generically-defined utopian fiction, but overall the nineteenth-century’s utopian impulse which permeated sociocultural theories, literary works in other genres, and in community structures.
As one example, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward is a American utopian novel published in 1888; Bellamy’s text is cited by many utopian studies scholars who claim it is utopian in its spirit, even if we now look back critically at Bellamy’s Boston as a consequence of his time period and privilege. However, at the time, Bellamy’s work was heavily parodied and critiqued, leading to ‘the first major upsurge of dystopian literature. . .as a consequence of [Bellamy’s] popularity.’[41] The most famous response to Bellamy was News from Nowhere (1890), written by British author, William Morris. In the years after Looking Backward’s publication until 1900, scholars recorded anywhere from 162 and 200 utopian and dystopian titles published,[42] a notable percentage of which are direct parodies or sequels, or more subtly acknowledge Bellamy’s work. These numbers only account for nineteenth-century British and American works published after Looking Backward, which, of course, excludes the total number of utopian and dystopian works published before 1888, proto-utopian works, and all global innovations in utopian writing outside a Eurocentric view.
That same utopian hopefulness which marked H.G. Wells’ publication of Little Wars, that the game of strategy and roleplay could be played rather than enacted in reality, is what informs my own look into contemporary TTRPGs and their role in disrupting discriminatory structures which have long-since dominated the hobby space. Studies have shown that tabletop gaming spaces are beneficial catalysts for community building, diverse representation and roleplay, and explorations of personal and social identities.[43] Therefore, Wizards’ emphasis on ‘community’ as part of their PR strategies speaks not only to the nature of the game as collaborative storytelling, but also attends to fans’ personal feelings of fulfillment through their experiences playing the game or watching actual play performances. The understanding of both aspects – Wizards’ marketability of an inclusive community experience and the actual work of utopian praxis – is where we must start with an application of utopian theory to D&D materials.
Setting the Scene: Starting with Utopian Theory
Utopianism and Dungeons and Dragons both face a similar struggle with problematic legacies. Many nineteenth-century utopian works of literature imagined progressive, economic and governmental structures which pointed towards equitable, socialist futures. Yet even the most progressive nineteenth-century utopias were often still utopias of exclusion, creating only worlds that were ideal for upper or middle-class, straight, white, cis men. In the twentieth century, utopianism also became, controversially, associated with fascism and Stalinism – in the eyes of anti-utopians, utopia emboldened totalitarian regimes to pursue eugenicist and genocidal policies – and whatever the merits of this account, it has profoundly shaped the reception of utopian discourse.[44] These complicated histories have contemporary resonances and new complications, and my work here is not to simplify the legacies or modern implications in the fields of utopian studies or game studies. Instead, I wish to highlight how both utopianism and TTRPGs can be used for radical speculation and an upending of structures seen as unshakeable or natural. Claims of neutrality are never rhetorically neutral.
However, the redemption of utopianism as a viable social theory, as well as the celebration of marginalized utopian authors, has rejuvenated the field; in the same way, the important work of freelance and indie developers in TTRPGs has dramatically expanded the culture towards queer, crip, anti-racist, and de-colonial play and performance, and diverse future imaginaries including solarpunk, Afrofuturism, and Amazofuturism.[45] At the same time that we can emphasize and celebrate these innovative interventions in TTRPGs, given the financial and cultural capital held by ‘the world’s greatest roleplaying game,’ we must examine how D&D and WotC perform and plagiarize what marginalized TTRPG creators live and enact. Therefore, I analyze how WotC’s main, published materials have moved towards the utopian, in some ways, while also recognizing areas they are more reticent to change. The following analysis will specifically address the subtle language WotC uses to distance themselves from their problematic histories (as contrasted against D&D’s not-so-subtle racism and sexism in past publications), as well as how D&D uses inclusive language representative of political progress.
Lyman Tower Sargent’s work clearly outlines “three faces of utopianism”: social theory, practice, and literature.[46] In applying utopianism to Dungeons and Dragons and TTRPGs, the most applicable faces are utopian social theory and utopian literary genres. Utopian practice could emerge in specific campaign settings, such as those which replicate or imagine intentional communities, but these would be more akin to representations of utopian living.[47] Utopian scholars, like Tom Moylan in Becoming Utopian, discuss the transformative possibilities of the utopian imaginary, especially in politically suspended moments.[48] Being at an important socio-political precipice for the future of TTRPGs and D&D, there is utopian possibility for change. Utopianism can take hold in terms of the relationships between players, DMs, and audiences (in the case of actual play), and with regards to the stories WotC produces and that players and DMs create. Utopianism in the tabletop gaming community must account for the complex networks that come with play, storytelling, and consumption.[49] Utopian social theory influences both storytelling and player/DM/audience relationships, and utopianism as a literary genre can be generically invoked through the worldbuilding of stories.
Scholarship in utopian studies is often split between the study of historical utopian movements and fiction and the advocacy for social justice through actual or genuine utopian praxis, or, the act of “becoming utopian.”[50] There are long discussions about the classification of utopian thinking, including the concepts of concrete and abstract utopias, starting with Ernst Bloch,[51] and in utopian research, one often must parse colloquial, formalist, and historical uses of the word utopian. Utopian studies as a field is interdisciplinary, and scholarship often crosses bounds between humanities, social sciences, and sciences; Sargent’s ‘three faces of utopianism’ serve as references or analytical focal points across these disciplines. As a result, when ‘utopia’ is used, the contextual and rhetorical impact must also be addressed: utopia, in many common usages, can mean unrealistic, perfect, hopeful, fascist, and, unfortunately, boring. While the definition of “dystopia” is often a bit clearer, my interest is in how utopia and dystopia are used – by whom and against who or what, and for what purpose. This study shows how 1) groups can rhetorically use utopia and dystopia’s various meanings as negative labels against a social movement, organization, or media property, while other groups might label the exact same social movement, organization, or media property as utopian in a positive sense;[52] and 2) tabletop roleplaying games and the community provide numerous examples because of their roots in fantasy and science fiction, histories of condoning discrimination and gatekeeping, and the nature of speculation and imagination tied with “neutral” game rules. Wizards is in the process of designing a unified ‘community,’ one which is marketed as utopian in all but name, and using the language of social justice, is working to make their products not only the only choice, but the only ‘ethical’ choice.
Woke D&D (Utopia) is Boring and “Unbeliavable”
Marlan was bored, with the ultimate boredom that only Utopia can supply.
-Arthur C. Clarke, “The Awakening.”[53]
My problem with this kind of “diversity” is that it breaks immersion, and i consider immersion to be the most important thing on a TTRPG.
Even fantasy has to follow some rules if you want it to feel beliavable. To something be beliavable it has to be concise, coherent and cohesive. To portray an antique / medieval world as an melting pot of ethnicities where everyone lives happily without racism, slavery and things like that it’s not beliavable, is just bland and boring.
-arctic_fox, Topic: [List] TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies[54]
Utopia and tabletop both exist in the realm of speculation and offer responses to real-life contexts. Both also assume a kind of collective storytelling – utopian fiction, often in an anticipatory or reactionary style, and TTRPGs in the direct, collective imagination gathered around a physical or virtual table. Since D&D’s recent efforts to edit and update their game materials towards a more politically progressive and socially diverse positionality, utopia and TTRPG have shared two other characteristics: conservatives claim that both are ‘boring’ and ‘unrealistic.’ For TTRPGs, the label categorizes socially progressive TTRPGs as ‘unrealistic,’ contrasted against the ‘near reality’ of Gygax-era materials. What these two characteristics demonstrate is not only common assumptions about utopia, but also assumptions of what is considered necessary as part of TTRPG worldbuilding, narrative, and game mechanics.
A common phrase in utopian studies is the assertion that “one person’s utopia may well be another’s dystopia,”[55] and while I am quoting from Gregory Claeys’ entry in the Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures, this sentiment is widespread as both an accepted critique of the field and utopianism more broadly. As Philip Abbott reviews in “Genre Bending and Utopia-Building,” utopian critiques extend throughout history and continue into contemporary conversations. Lyman Tower Sargent has called utopia’s relativism a conflict of visions, where, at its core, utopian action is the non-consensual imposition of one’s own dream onto others, requiring limitations of freedom or equality to eventually reach the proposed utopian destination.[56] Jean Bethke Elshtain echoes Sargent in saying “utopias are ‘boring at best’ and ‘deadly at worst.”[57] I opened this section with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke, who speaks of a unique kind of boredom and stasis characteristic to utopia – “the ultimate boredom.” In Clarke’s and other assessments of utopia, the boredom comes from viewing utopia as perfection gained; if utopia is perfection gained, there is no conflict, no opportunity for change, and utopia allows only for the maintenance of the status quo.
In one such example from the nineteenth century, Walter Besant’s The Inner House describes not only an anti-utopian society[58] experiencing stagnation, but one that is eternally stagnant. Scientific advancement grants immortality, and as a result, The Inner House plays with the absurdity of a perfect society completely absent of change: “In the old unhappy days there would have been restless activity—a hurrying to and fro; there would have been laughter and talking—everybody would have been talking. . . formerly there would have been the most insolent differences in costume. . . Now, no activity at all; no hurrying, no laughing, not even any talking. . .No foolish talking. As for their dress, it was all alike.”[59] If the utopian future promises perfection, anti-utopians in the nineteenth century identified different ways in which this stagnation might manifest, usually also tied with critiquing socialism as reinforcing totalitarian limitations on behavior and dress.
Just as fantasy and science fiction as genres have often been tied with escapism and disconnect with reality, utopianism in all of its forms has held the same label. While utopian scholars and philosophers have worked to reverse this negative view of utopian possibilities, the same characteristic holds as was ascribed to fiction writers, founders and members of intentional communities, and to those advocating for utopian political thinking. The first attempt to position utopianism as a legitimate social theory comes from Bloch, who argues the difference between concrete and abstract utopias as being action and inaction. As Ruth Levitas summarizes, abstract utopias are “fantastic and compensatory. It is wishful thinking, but the wish is not accompanied by a will to change anything. In the day-dream, it often involves not so much a transformed future, but a future where the world remains as it is except for the dreamer’s changed place in it.”[60] In “Four Modes of Utopian Thinking,” Fátima Vieira describes prospective thinking as the aspect of utopia which promotes forward thinking spurred by a “surplus of desire”; being prospective isn’t to be disconnected from reality, but rather, “utopian thinking always moves from the real,” while simultaneously rejecting the status quo.[61] Vieira makes two additional clarifications: 1) prospective thinking’s aspect of futurity isn’t a certainty, but rather a “network of possibilities, and 2) prospective thinking does not indicate directionless wish-fulfilment, but rather intentional, researched, and intensely pursued possibility.”[62] Finally, Paul Ricoeur and Karl Mannheim both argue for utopia’s revolutionary possibilities, but Ricoeur argues that if utopia is tied primarily with escapism or nostalgia, then we reach what Levitas calls “compensatory utopias.”[63] Ricoeur warns against utopias which are “not grounded in reality,” and Levitas’ concept of compensatory utopias are those which are so fantastical as to no longer be concerned with social change — as Harvey Cox writes, utopias which, are more focused on “tempt[ing] people away from dealing with the real issues” rather than critiquing the present and motivating social change.[64]
Little has changed in the way socialist practices are viewed from the nineteenth-century to our contemporary political climate; perspectives range from rejections of progressive thinking over nostalgia, labels of ‘sheep’ and assertions of ‘grooming,’ and expressions of victimization while lamenting the modern ‘snowflake’ era. In TTRPG community forums, podcasts, product reviews, and even gameplay materials, conservative voices reject moves towards diversity and inclusion. Because of TTRPGs’ ties with the fantasy and science fiction genres, right-wing arguments often also include “realism” as a point of contention.
It is not my intention in this work to review the long scholarly history of how white supremacists, fascists, and the radical right take up fantasy and science fiction to advance their dangerous and discriminatory viewpoints.[65] However, I reference this continued struggle in order to contextualize similarities in rhetoric from members from the TTRPG community and to note correlations to other relevant media properties, such as the recent backlash against Rings of Power casting decisions.[66] Alongside the Clarke quote on utopia, I also included a quote from a user on the RPGSite forum topic “TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies”; artic_fox’s statements, while most directly resonating with my arguments here, were by no means a unique contribution to this forum. From the hundreds of pages of responses to the shared Google doc, “Consumer’s Guide to TTRPGs: A Handbook on Ethical Companies in Gaming,”[67] the sentiments remain consistent. Arguing from a similar position to most DMs and game designers who insist on sexual violence as part of a “realistic” campaign, George R.R. Martin justified depictions of rape in the Game of Thrones adaptation by saying it would be ‘fundamentally dishonest’ to not include scenes of sexual violence as an author writing fantasy ‘strongly grounded in history.’[68] There has been extensive work, including Garcia’s article, regarding gender and sexuality in official D&D source material, and while it is a known issue with Dungeons and Dragons as well as the pulp, fantasy source material which inspires it, these in-game representations – or lack thereof – can lead to a diminished presence of marginalized folks at the table as well.[69] While Wizards regards such issues to be a thing of the past, recent concerns say otherwise. George R.R. Martin, in the same interview wherein he defends rape by arguing for its historical accuracy, said, ‘“I want to portray struggle. Drama comes out of conflict. If you portray a utopia, then you probably wrote a pretty boring book.’ As a scholar of nineteenth-century utopian and dystopian fiction, and as a believer in the utopian scholarship and creative innovation of TTRPG communities, I know what Martin describes as ‘boring’ is simply unimaginative.
Revising out Racism: D&D’s Continued Issues with Discriminatory Systems
D&D and other mainstream TTRPGs have a fraught history, with their imaginary worlds and scenarios often not deviating from white supremacist, oppressive, colonial realities. While indie developers, progressive streamers, and countless other creators, GMs, and players have taken significant steps towards separating their own TTRPGs from this problematic history, this project is interested in investigating how mainstream Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks, WotC products, and actual play performances reinforce or reject harmful stereotypes and violent discriminatory practices. An integral part of this analysis is the relationship between speculation and imagination in TTRPGs and utopianism.
Wizards of the Coast has placed disclaimers on different digital stores (such as Drive Thru RPG and Dungeon Masters Guild) regarding earlier sourcebooks in Dragonlance and Greyhawk. While WotC still acknowledges these worlds as possible settings for their adventure modules in their published materials, their disclaimer on purchasing original sourcebooks politically distances themselves from this past content:
We (Wizards) recognize that some of the legacy content available on this website does not reflect the values of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise today. Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were commonplace in American society at that time. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. This content is presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible. This part of our work will never end.
This disclaimer can be found on most of D&D’s earlier editions, including on as recent as 4th Edition materials (published from 2007-2013), but are not present on 5e materials.[70] By placing this disclaimer on all materials, besides the edition which they are currently producing, WotC not only protects their interests but also preemptively guards against criticism. Wizards places the fault in the age of materials as well as in what was ‘commonplace in American society at that time.’ However, placing the same disclaimer across all materials published before 2013, when the 5th Edition was published in 2014, presents the message of diversity and inclusion as disingenuous. The disclaimer was only added in early July 2020 after the company was continuing to profit off the sales of some of their most controversial content, Oriental Adventures and Al-Qadim,[71]while simultaneously promising commitments to diversity in their “Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons” statement.[72] While D&Dhas come a long way from having a max strength stat for women — alongside Gygax’s claims of men and women having different brain functions[73] — by not critically addressing the racist, sexist, and ableist roots of D&D’s systems as well as its source materials, Wizards only succeeds in maintaining a conservative status quo, with a thin veneer of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
An Overview of D&D Materials Post-Diversity Statement
Part of my work for this essay is to compare Dungeons & Dragons’s diversity initiatives, which emerged out of the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020,[74] to the game materials specifically referenced in that commitment as well as how Wizards has positioned diversity and inclusion as part of their brand since then.[75] As an overview, the commitment states that ‘making D&D as welcoming and inclusive as possible has moved to the forefront of our priorities over the last six years,’ which locates the start of their initiatives with the publication of the first 5th edition core rulebook, The Player’s Handbook.[76] That initiative, according to the diversity statement, includes ‘depicting characters who represent an array of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and beliefs’ as well as doing ‘an even better job in handling. . .issues’ related to the representation of certain races, ‘orcs and drow being two of the prime examples,’ as ‘monstrous and evil.’[77] Here, there is a recognition that fantasy races are often connected to ‘how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated.’[78] Finally, D&D lists what they have done, and will continue to do, to improve, including new representations of orcs and drow in Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, revising previously published game materials such as Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, revising depictions of the Vistani in both Curse of Strahd: Revamped and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft,[79] changing rules for racially-tied ability score improvements, including sensitivity readers as part of their publishing process, and hiring more diverse freelancers and staff. As an overview of this commitment, I will address how Wizards has worked towards these initiatives, how they have come up short, and how most recent events shed light towards this ongoing discussion.
In the publication timeline since Wizards of the Coast’s diversity commitment in June 2020, The Curse of Strahd: Revamped (October 2020), Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (November 2020), Candlekeep Mysteries (March 2021), Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft (May 2021) were published. While D&D has since published other game materials,[80] this chapter will primarily focus on those texts directly and indirectly referenced in the “Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons” statement as well as those game materials which since have been at the center of relevant controversies. In order of chronology, I will provide an overview of these publications, their inclusive features, and the public’s reception.
Eberron and Wildemount: New Representations?
For context, in the Player’s Handbook the “archetypes” of half-orcs are that they live in ‘tribes and slums,’ they have the racial trait of ‘savage attacks,’ and, while ‘not evil by nature, […] evil does lurk within them, whether they embrace it or rebel against it.’[81] Drow’s archetypes are they followed ‘Lloth down the path of evil,’ as ‘a race of demon-worshiping marauders […] emerging only on the blackest nights to pillage and slaughter.’[82] The half-orc and drow examples in the Player’s Handbook are the most commonly referenced with regards to ways the gaming system supports racism and bio determinism; these examples were cited when critiquing the hypocrisy of D&D’s responses to the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which Wizards addressed in their diversity statement: ‘We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.’[83] But, Wizards’ claim about these texts showing orcs and drow in a different light is questionable; there are changes, but the depth and sustainability of those changes is not assured. At the same time, that Wizards’ disclaimer only addresses materials published before 5e, whereas their “Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons” statement points to these same issues being present in their current 5e texts.
Before the 2020 commitment to diversity, Wizards published both Eberron (November 2019) and Wildemount (March 2020).[84] While Eberron and Wildemount do address drow and orcs, their treatment is not as redemptive and foundational as Wizards’ claims in their diversity statement. First, both of these source books have the specific context of being within particular campaign settings, thus also extending the exclusive frame to their rules, settings, classes, and races. As the earlier source text of the two, Eberron discusses the Player’s Handbook races as follows: ‘Choose one of the playable races detailed in this chapter, or pick a race from the Player’s Handbook and learn here how Eberron has affected that species’ development.’[85] As an optional campaign setting, Eberron rhetorically positions all character options as being adjusted to fit the new setting, which means all changes made to the orcs and drow in this campaign book are not changes which retroactively affect the Player’s Handbook. Instead, DMs can point to the Eberron-specific descriptions of races and classes and exclude them – in the same way that DMs often exclude material outside of the Player’s Handbook or pick and choose what sourcebooks are acceptable for their campaign or DMing style.[86]
For orcs and half-orcs in Eberron, there are three groups of orcs described: those who battle against fiends, those who are a ‘perpetual threat,’ and a group of orcs who are split between cultists and those who fight aberrations. Additionally, the half-orcs of Khorvaire are said to typically be imagined as a ‘bounty hunter,’ ‘dogged inquisitive,’ or ‘a few ignorant sorts might still hold the stereotype of a “simpleton from the swamps.”[87] While arguably more detailed in terms of culture than the single shade of violence presented in the Player’s Handbook or Volo’s, these cultures all assume a legacy of violence and turmoil; orcs will never be depicted as great artists or inventors, as their racial histories – even when obscured – are inextricably inscribed.As a change from the Player’s Handbook, orcs are included as a character race, which was an addition since the “Monstrous Adventurers” inclusion in Volo’s Guide to Monsters (2016). The revision in Eberron for a playable orc, three years later, is to remove “Menacing” as a racial trait. It is true that Eberron’s descriptions of orcs are certainly more varied, and the different groups have a range of relationships described with other cultures, rather than having a singular trait of being untrustworthy and savage. Instead of ascribing evil alignment to most orcs, ‘the orcs of Eberron are a passionate people, given to powerful emotion and deep faith.[88] ’‘Passion’ is a similar sentiment expressed in the Player’s Handbook, where half-orcs are described as ‘feel[ing] emotion powerfully.’[89] However, as a reader, there are a few clear omissions. Eberron, succeeds in slightly revising orcs – by removing a racial trait, replacing it with ‘Primal Intuition,’ which was a trait originally included for half-orcs, and by shifting their typical alignment from ‘usually chaotic evil’ to ‘generally chaotic’ – but, these revisions only work to provide additional campaign-specific context for orc culture, while still largely holding onto outdated orc and half-orc player character options. The contrast between these statements – simultaneously calling orcs ‘passionate,’ while still holding to ‘aggression’ as one of their predominant racial traits is stark, and to not include revised half-orc stats is a further demonstration of WotC’s inadequate approach to correcting racist, biological determinism in their texts.
Wildemount addresses orcs, half-orcs, and drow in similar terms to Eberron, but only orcs have traits for designing a player character. These traits are almost identical to Eberron as a revision from Volo’s, but the alignment description is more of a return to the Player’s Handbook: ‘Orcs fear the curse of ruin that is said to plague their race, and tend strongly toward either chaos (accepting their fate), or toward law (rejecting it).’[90] Wildemount’s description is in line with the legend of Gruumsh in the Player’s Handbook, where half-orcs decide whether to ‘embrace […] or rebel against’ their nature.[91] Much of the flavor text regarding orcs and half-orcs also replicates the Player’s Handbook, which discusses how legends call orcs ‘mindless abominations’ who ‘commit acts of terrible violence and anger.’[92] Instead of rejecting this bioessentialist reading, Wildemount directly states, ‘Orcs and half-orcs do feel a certain pull toward violence and anger,’ but then tries to attribute orcish violence to ‘the same selfish, violent impulses that corrupt all mortal beings.’[93] This claim about violent impulses might be stronger if other races were similarly described, but this addendum is only attached to orcs and half-orcs.
Drow stats for players are not included in Eberron since they are available in the Player’s Handbook. The only descriptions of drow in Eberron are as products of ‘mage-breeders’ who made the drow, ‘assassins bred to prey on their other kin.’[94] The flavor text regarding Xen’drik drow details how drow remained ‘subjects of the giants’ until they sought their freedom.[95] Similar to the orcs, drow developed into several cultures: ‘hunters dedicated to a scorpion god,’ a group which believes ‘they are destined to cleanse the world in a fiery apocalypse,’ and those who fight ‘aberrations of the underworld.’[96] Drow are given even less treatment in Wildemount, where their history is that they have only recently left the Underdark, that they are ‘subject to imperial propaganda and widespread prejudice’ in the Dwendalian Empire, and that the drow of Xhorhas are respectful to all people because of their belief in being ‘reborn into non-drow bodies.’[97] Again, drow are inseparable from a history of trauma, and where there is more cultural details, those details include a pervasive belief and hope of leaving one’s drow body. In the Player’s Handbook, the best drow is either Drizzt or dead; in Wildemount, the best drow are reborn as non-drow.
The Curse of Strahd: How Revamped Is It?
Following the diversity initiative in June 2020, Wizards published The Curse of Strahd: Revamped, which was both an expansion and revision of the 2016 campaign, The Curse of Strahd. While the new release removed references to the Vistani as ‘uncivilized’, superstitious drunkards, as Julie Muncy argues in, “D&D’s Culturally Sensitive Strahd Revamp is Here, But It’ll Cost You,” “the [revised] module still gives the Vistani abilities to curse and hypnotize players or cast spells like Evil Eye, which, along with unrevised art that heavily conjures stereotyped imagery of the Romani, leans into tropes that suggest the Romani have mystical, dangerous powers, tropes that have been used in the past to target Romani for persecution.”[98] Additionally, as Muncy points out, Revamped was released as a special box edition with an extra special price tag: “players who might want an edition of their fun vampire module that isn’t culturally insensitive. . .[have to] go out and buy a $99.99 collector’s edition.”[99] While many reviews of Revamped positioned these revisions as necessary, even Chris Perkins acknowledged how incremental and surface-level those changes were: when speaking of Revamped’s descriptions of the Vistani and representations of disability, specifically related to the character, Ezmerelda D’Avenir,[100] Perkins claimed they ‘wanted to clean that up a bit and remove some stuff that the fans didn’t particularly like in terms of representation and how they were depicted – it’s the sort of very granular-but-important change. More like surgical changes to the adventure than some sort of grand sweeping change.’[101] Rather fully supporting the changes to representation as being an intentional, ethical decision, Perkins’ statement further justifies the revisions as primarily being a response to the community. Since this book was published likely too soon after the 2020 commitment (but, notably, still six years after Wizards moved diversity “to the forefront of [their] priorities”[102]) to make additional, substantial changes, there were ambitious promises for progress still on the horizon for both continued revisions to the Vistani (with Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft) as well as to character creation and game rules.
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Fixes Everything?
Hopes had been high for Tasha’s before its official release, especially coming off the promise made in WotC’s diversity statement: ‘Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases.’[103] But the official release disappointed many players and fellow creators. Whereas the diversity statement acknowledged D&D’s problematic legacy, and the need to collectively reflect on and transform its approach to race, Tasha’s reverted to a more defensive tone. Its alternate rules would expand player choice to ‘realize certain character concepts’.[104] A character who did not take the standard racial bonuses in the Player’s Handbook would remain the exception, not the rule: ‘The following options step outside those assumptions to pave the way for truly unique characters’.[105] And, Tasha’s also featured a brief defense against accusations of bioessentialism: the Constitution bonus, for example, ‘doesn’t apply to every dwarf, just to dwarf adventurers, and it exists to reinforce an archetype.’[106]
Orrin Grey in “Tasha’s Cauldron of Too Little, Too Late” addresses criticism of Tasha’s, concisely arguing, ‘Dungeons & Dragons has the responsibility – and the resources – to combat the racism and colonialism that are baked into their settings in an aggressive and proactive way. This halfhearted fob toward something that every decent DM has been doing all along is, well, as the title of this essay implies, far too little, and far too late.’[107] Graeme Barber, and many others from the community, also expressed his disappointment with Tasha’s: ‘[W]hat this release told me, and likely tells many others, is that Wizards is still not serious about dealing with the racism and bioessentialism in their books and game. It told me that they’re entirely happy with the status quo, and that their promises of change, diversity, and inclusion are as hollow as they were revealed to be this summer, and that their apology was empty.’[108] Utopianism, as a social theory of constant reevaluation leading to progress, rejects a process of small fixes while ignoring the fundamental issues of the status quo.
Although hopes were originally high, reviews of Tasha’s critiqued the text as not fulfilling a needed fix for racially-grounded mechanics. As Andrew Limbong reports in “’Dungeons & Dragons’ Tries To Banish Racist Stereotypes,” while Wizards producers were confident in their response in “Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons,” Lauren Frazier, a game designer and currently working for Ramen VR, cautioned against a uncommitted approach: ‘They have a staff that’s going to read over things for sensitivity and that’s great. But I think you can’t polish that out at the last second […] the writing itself needs to come from a place of inclusivity and diverse ideas versus just the same stuff that they always write and then have someone go over it with a highlighter to try and fix the racism at the end.’[109] Rather than a full commitment to anti-racist and decolonial praxis, Tasha’s demonstrates instead half-measures, optional rules, and a reaffirmation of the “model minority” trope. Frazier’s place of inclusivity can be read as one of utopian possibility, where design decisions are made with accessible, anti-racist approaches in place, rather than retroactively covering up discriminatory foundations.
While the text offers player options for changing ability scores, it does not directly address the historical critiques regarding certain races, such as aggressive traits for orcs, as well as violence “inherent” to other races, such as dark / drow elves. In terms of official Wizards of the Coast explanations for Tasha’s, Jeremy Crawford in “Customizable Options” under the Sage Advice series points to ‘archetypes’ that have been present ‘in D&D going all the way back to the ’70s.’[110] The language of archetypes is repeated in Tasha’s, where race-specific ability score boosts and penalties are said to ‘reinforce an archetype.’ The existing system of racial traits, implicitly, are not bioessentialist, but rather literary devices. However, there is no reason why they can’t be both bioessentialist and literary devices. The example in Tasha’s for an archetype is, ‘if you’re a dwarf, your Constitution increases by 2, because dwarf heroes in D&D are often exceptionally tough.’[111] Dwarves, historically, have not been the main site of controversy regarding D&D races, and yet, by using dwarves rather than orcs or drow as the example, Wizards continues to distance their texts from previous wrongdoing and keep it out of their consumers’ memory. Flexibility with archetypes only reinforces D&D’s appearance of being apolitical, while instead purporting minoritized exceptionalism. It is the same claim with regards to Drizzt Do’Urden, who ‘broke the mold,’ ‘reject[ed] his heritage,’ and serves as ‘a model for those few drow who follow in his footsteps.’[112] While Wizards writers have acknowledged Drizzt’s position as a model minority (saying, in advertising for RA Salvatore’s books, that the ‘absolute evil nature of the drow […] catches the most heat,’ but argues that if it is not a ‘deal-breaker’ or if ‘you’re able to look past it’ then the ‘novels are fantasy comfort food’[113]), instead of addressing the problematic representation as discussed in Graeme Barber’s article, “Decolonization and Integration in D&D,”[114] Wizards “corrects” this trope by giving all players the option to make their characters exceptions. Responsibility, then, for creating complex, non-archetypal characters is shifted onto individuals and becomes reliant on player choice, rather than fixing the core of their discriminatory systems.
In the same way that Eberron and Wildemount are official, but not required texts, Tasha’s is just as supplementary as any other text outside of the three main D&D guides: the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. While there is an effort to show the limitations of the Player’s Handbook in Tasha’s, by writing ‘A typical character role in D&D includes little or no choice,’[115] throughout the text, the customization of character scores is consistently framed not just as “an option,” but more importantly, as “optional.” In advertisements for the text, all aspects of Tasha’s, from subclasses to expanded rules, are positioned as optional. Therefore, Wizards’ position is clear: the conservative status quo is part of the required texts to play D&D, all rules and campaign settings seeking to disrupt the status quo are optional and can be disregarded, and changes to D&D systems or settings to disrupt the status quo will not directly address the troubling histories and core racist tropes of traditional fantasy and science fiction genres.
Candlekeep and the Mysterious Edits
Wizards’ diversity initiatives emerging out of the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020 were contextualized by Orion Black leaving their position at WotC and calling to attention their experiences as a nonbinary Black contributor.[116] After Tasha’s was published in November 2020, the next official source text, Candlekeep Mysteries, was published in March 2021. Part of the appeal of Candlekeep Mysteries was its hiring of diverse freelance writers to contribute to the seventeen adventures featured in Candlekeep’s anthology. One contributor, Graeme Barber, discovered that his work, ‘The Book of Cylinders’, had been edited without consulting him. The edits introduced colonialist language, including the descriptor “primitive”. Much of the work Barber did to add to the Forgotten Realms lore and flesh out the Yuan-Ti and Grippli as having complex societies was stripped from his original manuscript.[117] Barber expressed particular regret at having advertised for WotC and promoted Candlekeep under the misconception that core elements of his story remained unchanged. Barber’s story is a specific example where WotC’s efforts towards diversity and inclusion appear shallow and performative, rather than emerging from serious self-reflection. When given an opportunity to support diverse writers as well as to apply decolonial and anti-racist approaches to their adventures and stories, WotC substantially changed Barber’s work by “correcting” his de-colonial and anti-racist praxis. In that correction, Wizards signals the necessity of colonial and racist dynamics – these are not surface level descriptors of races and game setting, but are integral to D&D’s established worldbuilding. And, in WotC’s horrid treatment of the same marginalized staff they are celebrated for hiring, their adherence to basic nondiscrimination laws is revealed to be just that – basic.
Van Richten’s Guide, Party of Three
Finally, in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, published in May 2021 – almost a year since the “Dungeons and Dragons and Diversity” statement –we see an inclusive roster of contributors as well as three credited cultural consultants: Adam Lee, Tim Stone, and Ivan Wong. However, having only three cultural consultants on record for Ravenloft seems disproportionate to the cultural complexity of the text, which borrows from Indian, Chinese, and Egyptian sources, among others.[118] While it is not clear whether WotC also reached out to uncredited cultural consultants, relied on the contributors’ own knowledge for their domains, or employed a combination of these possibilities to address gaps in their readership, the text was positively received, even with its sparse party of consultants.[119] Chris Perkins revealed their typical structure for “inclusion reviews were done at the discretion of the Product Lead,” who was Wes Schneider in the case of Ravenloft; for products produced before November 2022, Perkins said the Product Lead would identify “which pieces of product needed an outside inclusion review,” and “while the D&D team is racially, ethnically, gender, and cognitively diverse,” Perkins continued, “we don’t want our marginalized employees to be burned with the task of reviewing content for cultural competency. That’s why we leverage the expertise of outside cultural consultants.”[120]
While not all contributors to Ravenloft have spoken about why they were selected as writers, K. Tempest Bradford wrote, “I worked on one of the domains, Har’Akir, which is a fantasy realm based on ancient Egypt. . .I’ve been researching ancient Egypt for years and years for fiction projects and that’s the main reason I was tapped for this. I loved getting the opportunity to reimagine the problematic aspects of the domain that were introduced decades ago. . .that were not very accurate or respectful.”[121] Bradford’s testimonial, at the very least, demonstrates the likelihood that contributors were selected in part because of their diverse identities, their cultural expertise – personally and/or professionally, and with an intention to revise earlier, problematic depictions of the Ravenloft domains. While Ravenloft shows a step in the right direction, having so few credited cultural consultants and with freelance contributors serving two roles as writers and experts, Wizards can continue to make improvements in the review process.
With regards to improvements since The Curse of Strahd: Revamped, Charlie Hall argues that Ravenloft corrects the more problematic and troubling representations in early D&D source texts[122] including the Vistani and Ezmerelda D’Avenir.[123] However, as with Eberron, Wildemount, Tasha’s, and Candlekeep, Ravenloft’s more progressive ruleset and campaign suggestions are framed by the text’s classification as supplementary. As the final product referenced in the commitment to diversity, Ravenloft represents an end to the more specific initiatives cited by Wizards; however, there are a few additional publications and recent events in the D&D community which are relevant as part of this ongoing conversation.
One D&D, Jammed-Up Progress, and the OGL
Since Ravenloft, there have been publications of note which have reflected Wizards’ original commitment, including Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, which for the first time in 50 years[124] featured an entire writing staff and almost full production staff of only BIPOC.[125] Directly influenced by his experience as a contributor to Ravenloft, the design co-lead for Radiant Citadel, Ajit George pitched the idea for the book to Wizards by “explaining how powerful it would be to open up D&D’s audience to something fresh and new, something that hadn’t been seen before in the fantasy and fiction of D&D,” which included representations of “cultures, myths, legends, folklore, politics, [and] history” of real-world societies.[126] While Radiant Citadel most directly reflects the push for greater diversity in Dungeons and Dragons, other game materials published after 2021 featured shifts in thinking as well: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (September 2021) had more opportunities for non-violent solutions to encounters; Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos (December 2021) had a larger representation of LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming NPCs, in addition to more ethnic and racial diversity; Monsters of the Multiverse worked to remove alignments for player characters, stripped out setting-specific descriptions for monsters, and revised prescriptive monster personalities and motivations.[127] However, one month following the acclaimed release of Radiant Citadel, two major events shook the community: the announcement of One D&D and the release of Spelljammer.
As previously mentioned, One D&D promises to adopt new language around character races and reflect that shift also in game mechanics. Instead of Tasha’s flexible ability scores being an optional rule, One D&D commits to the flexibility while also separating abilities from character races; ability score increases are tied instead to a character’s background, which can be fully customized. These more major changes, along with other revisions indicated as part of the playtest, seemed to indicate some significant work in diversity and inclusion initiatives were taking place at Wizards, beyond the initial commitment in 2020. However, in the same month of the official One D&D announcement, the boxed set for Spelljammer: Adventures in Space was released, and the community began sharing descriptions and images of the Hadozee, described in the Astral Adventurer’s Guide as ‘deck apes,’ who were enslaved and sold by a wizard, whose experiments magically enhanced them and gave them sentience.[128] The TTRPG community pointed out not only correlations to past traumas of Black, brown, and disabled folks,[129] but also provided comparisons between the published Hadozee images and minstrelsy.[130] The lore and images were replaced on D&D Beyond, followed by an uncredited apology. Much of the apology’s language – such as ‘D&D teaches that diversity is a strength’ – is either word-for-word or similarly phrased as their 2020 “Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons” commitment.[131] Of note, the statement rhetorically positions the year when the Hadozee first appeared (1982) with regrets that “not all portions of the content. . . were properly vetted before appearing in our most recent release.”[132] However, the reference to the 1982 material is from an earlier race, the Yazirians from Star Frontiers, and community members argued that those same referenced texts did not include the new details related to the Hadozee’s enslavement, meaning this information was newly composed for Spelljammer.[133] This rhetorical distancing from the outdated, racist publications of D&D’s past is the same approach as Wizards’ disclaimers on digital materials published before 2013.
Since the backlash in August and September, Chris Perkins released a follow-up statement in November 2022, which draws attention to the issues with Spelljammer, but also promises additional steps in production with a newly implemented inclusion-review process.[134] The statement confirms that the hadozee’s “illustration and the offensive text” were not “reviewed by cultural experts.”[135] While inclusion reviews originally were “done at the discretion of the Product Lead,” Perkins claims that “the studio’s new process mandates that every word, illustration, and map must be reviewed by multiple outside cultural consultants prior to publication.”[136] Additionally, inclusion reviews occur “at least once” during the “Text Creation phase, Art Creation phase, and Final Product Review phase” of production.[137] Perkins ending the statement with a renewal of D&D’s commitment to their fans, and one might assume after such public outcry that Wizards would work to stay out of the controversial spotlight.
Approximately two months after Perkins’ statement, Dungeons and Dragons’ Open Game License (OGL) 1.1 was leaked, and the TTRPG community – fans, game designers, artists, freelance writers, influencers, actual play performers – responded with more force than has been seen in recent memory. While much more has already been said about how the OGL 1.1 would have affected game developers, virtual tabletop systems, and TTRPG creators,[138] my focus in this brief overview is to address how diversity and inclusion were leveraged, and the possible motivations behind this clause in the document.[139]
In the original leaked document, Wizards states, “If You attempt to use the OGL as a basis to release blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, trans-phobic, bigoted, or otherwise discriminatory content, or do anything We think triggers these provisions, Your content is no longer licensed. . . We will not tolerate materials We consider to be in any way counter to the spirit of D&D.”[140] In response to the community outrage and the significant loss of paid subscriptions to D&D Beyond, several statements were made through D&D Beyond’s website, addressing the initial leak,[141] the subsequent release of an official draft and “playtest,”[142] and the survey results with the revoking of plans for a new OGL.[143] In each of these statements, Wizards remained committed to their argument that one of their major goals for the new OGL was “want[ing] the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products” as part of being “good stewards of the game.”[144] When the OGL 1.2 playtest started, their statement reiterated that the renewed license “allows us to address hateful content. . .OGL 1.2 lets us act when offensive or hateful content is published using the covered D&D stuff. We want an inclusive, safe play experience for everyone. This is deeply important to us, and OGL 1.0a didn’t give us any ability to ensure it.”[145] While not directly referencing the ongoing legal battle with NuTSR’s racist and transphobic content in leaked playtests[146] of Star Frontiers: New Genesis, Wizards’ injunction primarily focuses on evidence which would “adversely impact consumer sentiment of its own brand.”[147] As stated in the injunction,
Wizards has long embraced an inclusive culture for gaming, including for its Dungeons & Dragons products. All players are welcome in Wizards’ games. In recent years, Wizards has redoubled its commitment to diversity and inclusion. For example, Wizards is updating its descriptions of people when reprinting older Dungeons & Dragons products to remove racially insensitive material. It increasingly uses sensitivity readers and diversity experts in its creative process to ensure that its storytelling reflects its values. New products no longer include cultural traits like languages and acknowledge a range of physical characteristics for character races.[148]
The text goes on to mention the 2020 commitment to diversity and the statement released addressing the problematic descriptions of the hadozee as evidence towards Wizards’ efforts. What the connections between the legal battle with NuTSR and the OGL provisions demonstrates is that Wizards is clear about how they would like their brand to be viewed as advocating for diversity and inclusion, and part of their commitment is also working towards ways to protect their claims to diversity so as to avoid any similar issues, like Star Frontiers, in the future.
Utopia on the Tabletop: Future Possibilities and the Utopian Impulse
In an interview with the design co-leader of Radiant Citadel, Ajit George, George says it “felt like an act of defiance: a planting of a flag in the ground and saying things can be better,” when describing the Radiant Citadel as “this beautiful, breakable, but still fierce, fragile utopia.”[149] George mentions what he sought to avoid in the construction of the book: “conquest,” common fantasy stereotypes associated with cultures and “racialized ethnicities,” “war as a motivator for an adventure,” and “the continued perpetuation and consumption of” the traditional “good-versus-evil binary and an ‘othering’ of one group.”[150] In addition to featuring more creative and innovation solutions to typical structures of conflict, adventure, and representation, the “core of the book’s setting is a sanctuary for immigrants and refugees where food, housing, and healthcare are provided for all, and where peacekeeping and restorative justice takes priority over law enforcement.”[151] Narratively, one might claim that Radiant Citadel is the most direct example of tabletop utopianism emerging out of D&D’s 5th edition. And, in terms of utopian politics – the hiring of almost exclusively underrepresented artists, writers, and staff as well as the motivation behind the book’s production – the Radiant Citadel takes the steps evoked in Wizards’ commitment to diversity.
However, this chapter has highlighted a recent chronology of WotC’s responses to calls for accountability and how these responses demonstrate WotC performing an investment in social justice, but so far only in their supplemental published texts. While Radiant Citadel is an excellent text to analyze from a utopian perspective, its position as a collection – just like Candlekeep – of one-shot adventures or campaign settings relegates it to the margins. D&D’s core rulebooks remain unrevised; changes made to rules in supplementary texts do not directly influence those core standards, unless GMs and players choose, nor are these optional rules sufficient to upset the troubling culture that still plagues Dungeons and Dragons. While the initial changes for One D&Dseem encouraging as a welcome next step, if these turn out to be merely conservative patches, the community would have to wonder what aspect of the D&D brand – and fanbase – is still being protected. D&D has the resources and popularity to make meaningful change, not only with regards to their own products, but also in changing the culture of their player-base. The ‘boy’s club’ of D&D’s history, though significantly uprooted, still leads to artists and creators being attacked and treated with vitriol. One such example is Sara Thompson who created the combat wheelchair,[152] which was featured in Critical Role. Thompson ‘received death threats’ for producing content which would allow more than non-disabled or objectified disabled characters to be given agency and imagined in Dungeons and Dragons.[153] And, this is only one example of members of the D&D community attempting to destroy innovation and shut down utopian possibilities in order to maintain the status quo, reminiscent of G.R.R.’s Martin’s claims to historical realism.[154]
Incorporating tools such as Session Zero, X-Cards, and content warnings demonstrates a recognition and care for a wider audience of players and GMs than originally envisioned for D&D products. Player and GM interactions, in-game and out-of-game, are addressed in Tasha’s with regards to session zero: ‘Before making characters or playing the game, the DM and players can run a special session — colloquially called session zero — to establish expectations, outline the terms of a social contract, and share house rules.’[155] Wizards’ inclusion of tabletop interactions is an encouraging step in the right direction, giving ‘official’ weight to practices that are already very widespread in TTRPG communities. Tasha’s suggests that groups spend session zero developing a ‘social contract’, deciding on soft limits (‘a threshold that one should think twice about crossing, as it is likely to create genuine anxiety, fear, and discomfort’) and hard limits (‘a threshold that should never be crossed’).[156] In Candlekeep Mysteries, “Be a Sensitive Dungeon Master” continues Tasha’s discussion of hard and soft limits by addressing ‘phobias and triggers’ players may have.[157] The text specifically distinguishes the difference between introducing dramatic or stressful events for characters, while also keeping ‘players. . . relaxed and having fun.’[158]
Ideas and rules regarding player safety and triggering topics are almost directly taken up again in Ravenloft, where Tasha’s suggestion to ‘do some research’[159] turns into actual tableside safety tools. These approaches range from X-Cards and accessibility tools, to trigger warnings and discussions of racist and ableist traits typical to certain genres of horror.[160] Seeing a category specifically addressing accessibility was an encouraging surprise,[161] and even the discussions regarding session zero, ‘establishing boundaries’, which is a slight shift from soft and hard limits, as well as guidelines for consent and ‘content tools’,[162] where X-cards are addressed in fuller detail, all demonstrated careful and inclusive considerations on behalf of the contributors. Throughout the descriptions of ‘Genres of Horror,’[163] there are details about ‘genre tropes,’ which range from suggestions about common imagery or settings to discriminatory and harmful stereotypes. Across the different genres, the authors discuss the tropes to avoid, including ‘portraying disability as monstrous,’[164] and ‘framing marginalized demographics as monstrous and stigmatizing mental illness.’[165] As useful as these guides and suggestions are, not only is Ravenloft rhetorically positioned as an optional text – similarly denoting its content as optional – but its safety tools are additionally contextualized by its focus on the horror genre, which further relegates the tools to the margins. As an introduction to the chapter where these tools are introduced, the text says, ‘The tools and techniques in this chapter provide ways to make sure your game is both spooky and safe in ways right for your specific group.’[166] While these are tools which should be and have been used by conscientious and caring DMs at welcoming tables, relegating these rules and discussion of common tropes to a supplementary text which focuses only on running horror games (rather than strongly asserting their application to all games) demonstrates Wizards’ priorities.
In Nathaniel Rogers’ thesis, “A World Where They Belonged”: Queer Women’s Use of a Dungeons & Dragons Game to Experiment With, Express, and Explore Identity,” Rogers applies Maria Bäcke’s concept of “performative utopia” to describe how players were validated in their roleplaying, and thus were empowered to be more authentically themselves: ‘This construction of a safe environment allows for the creation of “performative utopias,” or a constitution of ideal spaces brought about through communicative actions, where a plurality of expressions and explorations about the self and the social environment occur.’[167] The construction of a safe space – utopian in its aspirations – around the tabletop requires a reevaluation of the GM’s role as ‘creator and final arbiter’[168] as well as viewing the tabletop as a community built upon communication, systems, and tools created, incorporated, revised, and expanded throughout a game’s tenure. However, the possibility of a performative utopia requires more than a semblance of safety achieved through certain content tools. Rather, the story’s content and game structure, interpersonal relationships, and forms of communication are all necessary components which must be consistently and carefully adjusted, evaluated, and tested to meet the changing needs and dynamics at the table. Most importantly, the creation of ‘performative utopias’ does not include a need for corporate rebranding or feeling empowered to consume a four-quadrant marketing model.
TTRPGs can go beyond simple revisions to appease the community, and instead show allyship through in-depth critique of their own game stories and systems and disrupt the ableist, sexist, and racist cores of their roleplaying game settings. This kind of disruption can only be successful if it is creative and exploratory, and animated by real excitement about new possibilities, rather than nostalgia for what is being displaced. Since the controversy with the OGL, other tabletop companies like Paizo and Chaosium have experienced a surge in interest,[169] while D&D Beyond faced website crashes due to subscription cancelations.[170] What was thought to be an unshakeable monopoly of the TTRPG community – one which survived the Satanic Panic and the many controversies over discriminatory source materials – is struggling to regain trust with creators, players, GMs, and influencers who have either sworn off of playing and purchasing D&D products entirely or who argue that D&D is their game – not Wizards’.[171]
How do we cast off tabletop’s discriminatory legacy and become utopian in our imagining of decolonized, accessible, queer, non-discriminatory worlds? Utopia and tabletop both exist in the realm of speculation and offer responses to real-life contexts. However, TTRPGs often do not imagine a world better than now; instead, most TTRPGs following in the footsteps of Dungeons and Dragons reproduce the violent and systemic oppressions of our present and past. Just as many early utopian works were privileged visions that reinforced hegemonic power structures and violence against minoritized identities, worldbuilding in TTRPGs can and have followed the same trajectory. Utopian thinking can, more radically disrupt the ‘character’ D’Anastasio writes of by speculating and enacting change in that which seems indisputable. For example, rather than making slight adjustments to combat mechanics, utopian thinking allows us to speculate about what TTRPGslook like without combat mechanics at all, or how to consider combat only as a last resort with lingering consequences. Utopian thinking may even allow us to go beyond the boundaries of the game itself, to think about the larger structures in which it is embedded. Indeed, other TTRPGs have reimagined these norms, so we must consider the significance of D&D’s decidedly un-utopian character in maintaining a regressive core, with initiatives for social justice at its margins.
Wizards could help to reimagine fantasy storytelling, by engaging the full breadth of vibrant and diverse contemporary fantasy writing, and diverse traditions of fantastical literature and art from around the world, going back many centuries. They can center forgotten and marginalized histories. They can also learn from how others in the TTRPG community have demonstrated radical, utopian praxis, which has been built on the efforts of creators of games like Motherlands, Wanderhome, Uncaged and Unbreakable, Coyote & Crow, Lancer, Dream Askew / Dream Apart, and many more, while making special effort to give credit where credit is due. As part of the TTRPG community, we can elevate homebrew supplements like Wyrmworks’ Limitless Heroics and the materials from Adventuring With Pride, in addition to tools for safer play already being incorporated in D&D game materials, like John Stavropoulos’ X-Card or lines and veils.[172]Utopia and tabletop games both have fraught histories. Both also have redemptive possibilities, which center marginalized creators and progressive thinking, and give free reign to the imagination to explore new identities, new relationships, new desires, and new ways of being together.
[1] While the “Fireside Chat” is hosted on Hasbro’s website for shareholders (https://investor.hasbro.com/events/event-details/ubs-fireside-chat), there is a more accessible recording shared on Youtube, which is the recording I will be referencing for time markers. MrDJLonghair. “Hasbro USB Fireside Chat – Full Webinar. No commentary, No Frills, + No end Credits.” Youtube, 9 Dec 2022. <https://youtu.be/OJpDA9CsdJQ>. (38:00 – 39:10).
[2] Ibid. (33:00 – 33:20).
[3] Ibid. (33:36 – 34:03).
[4] Ibid. (34:25 – 35:00).
[5] Ibid. (37:45 – 38:00).
[6] Ibid. (3:00 – 3:13).
[7] Chris Cocks shares an anecdote of going to a cocktail party where 10 out of 10 people will recognize the name, Dungeons and Dragons, compared with a significantly lower number who recognize Magic by name. “Fireside Chat,” (37:00 – 37:50).
[8] As discussed in “Consumable Play: A Performative Model of Actual Play Networks,” consumable play is a “sociocultural and monetary economy based upon communicative competence and social contracts; a concept with distinct features that frame play as networks in which performers and spectators operate through capitalistic (related to production, material goods, etc.) and experiential models of consumption (related to participatory networks, performance-as-commodity, online markets of exchange, etc.).’
Marsden, Mariah and Kelsey Paige Mason. “Consumable Play: A Performative Model of Actual Play Networks.” Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games. McFarland, 2021. p. 159.
[9] Player’s Handbook. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast (2014), p. 4.
[10] 3 Black Halflings. “Wizards of the Coast Executive Producer on the D&D OGL Controversy | Asking the Hard Questions.” Youtube, 6 Feb 2023. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPDc3DVHwKo&t=5s>. (54:45 – 55:06).
[11] 60 Minutes, CBS (1985). <archive.org>.
[12] My brief discussion of Monopoly, of course, is largely illustrative of how media can be presented as “neutral” when its origins are much more politically wrought. Even Monopoly’s conservative history is more complicated, as Mary Pilon discusses in The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game. Lizzy Magie is credited with the patent for The Landlord’s Game (1903), a game which “seize[d] on the natural human instinct to compete” (33) as a commentary on income inequalities, critique of capitalism, and reflection on “the economic theories of [nineteenth-century thinker] Henry George” (18). Despite inventing the game, Magie’s The Landlord’s Game was largely lost to obscurity because of the Parker Brothers’ purchase of her 1924 patent of the game, Charles Darrow’s “claim” over the game’s success, and ultimately Hasbro’s support of the “official” Monopoly game. Therefore, when discussing Monopoly’s conservative origins, this illustration considers Hasbro’s (and by extension, the Parker Brothers and Charles Darrow’s) version of Monopoly, rather than Magie’s original patent.
[13] Garcia, Antero. ‘Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons: How Systems Shape Racial and Gender Identities in Tabletop Role-Playing Games.’ Mind, Culture, and Activity, 24.3 (2017), p. 235.
[14] Mollet, Tracey. “Demogorgons, Death Stars and Difference: Masculinity and Geek Culture in Stranger Things.” Refractory, 31 (2019), n.p.
[15] Layne, Alex. “Actual Play as Actual Learning: What Gamers, Teachers and Designers Can Learn About Learning from Actual Play Videos.” Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-playing Games, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2021.
[16] Burns, Kam. “How Therapists Are Using Tabletop Games to Help People.” Wired, 22 Oct 2022. <https://www.wired.com/story/therapists-dungeons-dragons-tabletop-games-helping-people/>. Also, Abbott, Matthew, Kimberly A. Stauss, and Allen F. Burnett. “Table-top role-playing games as a therapeutic intervention with adults to increase social connectedness.” Social Work with Groups, 45.1 (2022), 16-31.
[17] DND Beyond Staff. “An Update on the Open Game License (OGL).” D&D Beyond, 13 Jan 2023. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-game-license-ogl>.
[18] Van Der Veld, Issy. “TSR’s Leaked Star Frontiers: New Genesis Playtest Contains Racist Descriptions.” The Gamer, 20 Jul 2022. <https://www.thegamer.com/tsr-dave-johnson-star-frontiers-playtest-racist/>
[19] Wizards of the Coast. “Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.” Dungeons & Dragons, 17 June 2020. <https://dnd.wizards.com/news/diversity-and-dnd>.
[20] As part of the larger story around NuTSR, Ernie Gygax, Jr. and others at the center of the legal battle with Wizards, there are a number of important events to consider. First, Ernie Gygax, Jr.’s rant during the “Live From the Bunker” podcast which accused Wizards of pushing out players who were “dissed for being old-fashioned, possibly anti modern trends, and enforcing, or even having the concepts of gender identity.” Baculi, Spencer. “Ernie Gygax Jr. Claims Wizards of the Coast Acted like “Corporate Raiders” Towards Dungeons & Dragons, Criticizes Current Tabletop Trend of Pushing Out Players Who Do Not Follow ‘Modern Trends.” Bounding Into Comics, 1 July 2021. <https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/07/01/ernie-gygax-jr-claims-wizards-of-the-coast-acted-like-corporate-raiders-towards-dungeons-dragons-criticizes-current-tabletop-trend-of-pushing-out-players-who-do-not-follow/>. Second, the accusations by Gygax and others of Wizards orchestrating a “coordinated assault” against TSR after his transphobic comments on the podcast were shared and supported by GiantLands. Backes, Eaven. “Nostalgia for The Brand TSR Turns to Hate.” Medium, 5 August 2021. <https://medium.com/@backese/nostalgia-for-the-brand-tsr-turns-to-hate-3948ed7e9522>.
[21] DND Beyond Staff. “Moving On From ‘Race’ in One D&D.” D&D Beyond, 1 Dec 2022. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1393-moving-on-from-race-in-one-d-d>.
[22] Rosenberg, Jacob. “15 Biggest Changes in the One D&D Playtest (January 2023).” CBR, 15 Jan 2023.
[23] Dungeons and Dragons. “One D&D – World Reveal Trailer.” Youtube, 18 Aug 2022, (1:00-3:11).
[24] While wargaming will be addressed in part later on in this chapter, there is much more to be said about the historic origin of TTRPGs from wargames, from H.G. Wells’ Little Wars to Cold War era strategic exercises. Aaron Trammell’s article “From Where Do Dungeons Come?” is an excellent introduction to this complex history. Trammell, Aaron. “From Where Do Dungeons Come?” Analog Game Studies (2014). <analoggamestudies.org/2014/08/from-where-do-dungeons-come/>.
[25] Gygax, Gary. Dungeon Masters Guide. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Games (1979), p. 224.
[26] Vossen, Emma. ‘There and Back Again: Tolkien, Gamers, and the Remediation of Exclusion through Fantasy Media.’ Feminist Media Histories 6.1 (2020). < doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2020.6.1.37>. Gygax also provides a longer list of twenty-seven authors; all are white, and all but three (Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton, Margaret St. Clair) are men.
[27] This conversation is especially interesting when Wizards has officially distanced itself from its transmedia storytelling by declaring that the only official canon of Dungeons and Dragons are those roleplaying materials published since 2014. Hoffer, Christian. “Dungeons & Dragons Novels, Video Games, and Other Spin-Offs Are Not Canonical to D&D Roleplaying Game.” Comicbook, 21 July 2021. <comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-canon-roleplaying-game-novels/>.
[28] D’Anastasio, Cecilia. ‘D&D Must Grapple With the Racism in Fantasy.’ Wired, 24 January 2021. < https://www.wired.com/story/dandd-must-grapple-with-the-racism-in-fantasy/>.
[29] DND Beyond Staff. “Moving On From ‘Race’ in One D&D.” D&D Beyond, 1 Dec 2022. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1393-moving-on-from-race-in-one-d-d>.
[30] Ibid. Paizo, one of D&D’s most direct competitors in terms of similarities to game system and genre, moved on from the term “race” with their second edition of Pathfinder (2019), replacing the common categories of race and subrace with ancestry and heritage. Adventures in Middle-earth (2016)chose “cultures,” despite how Tolkien’s work has even less directly influenced discourse around the use of the term “race” in fantasy genres. Other TTRPGs use more game-specific or genre-specific terminology, such as “animal-folk” or a character’s “playbook” (Wanderhome), or Vampire: The Masquerade’s bloodlines, clans, and heritages.
[31] For more discussion around racial game mechanics and ability scores, see: Jayemanne, Darshana and Cameron Kunzelman. “Cybernetic Irony: Racial Humour from Mecha-Hitler to Nuclear Gandhi.” Video Games and Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan: 2022.
[32] Codega, Linda. “Why Race is Still a Problem in Dungeons & Dragons.” Gizmodo, 15 Sept 2022. <https://gizmodo.com/one-dnd-racism-rpg-stereotypes-dungeons-dragons-wotc-1849531852>.
[33] Crawford, Jeremy, Christopher Perkins, and Ray Winninger. “Unearthed Arcana 2022: Character Origins.” D&D Beyond, 18 Aug 2022, pg. 2. <https://media.dndbeyond.com/compendium-images/one-dnd/character-origins/CSWCVV0M4B6vX6E1/UA2022-CharacterOrigins.pdf?icid_source=house-ads&icid_medium=crosspromo&icid_campaign=playtest1>.
[34] Codega, Linda. “Why Race is Still a Problem in Dungeons & Dragons.” Gizmodo, 15 Sept 2022. <https://gizmodo.com/one-dnd-racism-rpg-stereotypes-dungeons-dragons-wotc-1849531852>.
[35] “Unearthed Arcana 2022: Character Origins.” D&D Beyond, 18 Aug 2022, pg. 2.
[36] Alonge, Giaime. “Playing the Nazis: Political Implications in Analog Wargames.” Analog Game Studies (2019), < https://analoggamestudies.org/2019/09/playing-the-nazis-political-implications-in-analog-wargames/>.
[37] Riggs, Ben. Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons.St. Martin’s Press: New York, 2022. p. 9-19.
[38] For example, Pobuda, Tanya. “Girls Do(n’t) Play Games?: Re-visiting H.G. Wells Little Wars 106 Years Later.” Medium, 6 Dec 2021. <https://medium.com/@tanyapobuda/girls-do-nt-play-games-re-visiting-h-g-wells-little-wars-106-years-later-64faa5d58bbe>.
[39] Jarvis, Matt. “D&D’s golden age is over due to OGL revolt, says Dark Souls RPG writer.” Dicebreaker, 18 Jan 2023. < https://www.dicebreaker.com/series/dungeons-and-dragons/news/dnd-golden-age-over-ogl-revolt-dark-souls-rpg-writer?utm_source=social_sharing&utm_medium=CopyLink&utm_campaign=social_sharing>.
[40] Roemer, Kenneth. “Paradise Transformed: Varieties of Nineteenth-Century Utopias.” The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Cambridge University Press (2010). p. 79.
[41] Claeys, Gregory. “Dystopia.” The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures. Palgrave Macmillan (2022). p. 54.
[42] The number varies across different resources, but these two estimations are cited in the following:
Roemer, Kenneth. The Obsolete Necessity. Kent State University Press (1976).
Pfaelzer, Jean. The Utopian Novel in America, 1886-1896. University of Pittsburg Press (1985).
[43] Including work such as:
Kawitzky, Felix Rose. “Magic Circles: Tabletop role-playing games as queer utopian method.” Performance Research 25.8 (2020).
Pinkston, Renee. “Cooperative Acceptance and Tabletop Representation: Gender and Sexuality in the Fantasy Tabletop Role-Playing Game Dungeons and Dragons.” Arkansas State University (2019).
Crigger, Joshua. “An Exploration of Embodiment, Narrative Identify, and Healing in Dungeons and Dragons.” James Madison University (2021).
Shepherd, Toriana. “Roll for Identity: A Study of Tabletop Roleplaying Games and Exploring Identity.” University of Wyoming (2021).
Bosstick, Harold. “’To Become Who You Wish to Be’: Actual-Play Tabletop Roleplaying Game Podcasts as Oral Storytelling Outlets for Queer Community, Representation, and Identity.” Indiana State University (2021).
[44] Russell Jacoby is among those who question the link between utopianism and totalitarian violence. He writes of Nazism: “Anti-Semitic, racist, xenophobic, nationalist, authoritarian, but utopian? […] Those who refer to Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism as the death knell of utopia might give more attention to World War I, a bloodletting that directly spurred the Russian Revolution and, indirectly, Nazism. Scholars have never found a shred of utopianism either in the events leading to its outbreak or its four years of hostilities” (pp. 16, 20).
[45] Including such work as referenced in Vítor Castelões Gama and Marcelo Velloso Garcia’s article, “Amazofuturism and Indigenous Futurism in Brazilian Science Fiction.” Vector (2020), < https://vector-bsfa.com/2020/09/04/amazofuturism-and-indigenous-futurism-in-brazilian-science-fiction/#more-8535>.
[46] Sargent, Lyman Tower. Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press (2010), p. 5.
[47] There have been studies about LARPing and utopia, which extend this connection beyond the realm of fictional worldbuilding in impressive ways. Gerge, Tova. “Temporary Utopias: The Political Reality of Fiction.” The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp, 2014, 59-66.
Rantanen, Teemu. “Larp as a Form of Political Action: Some Insights from the Theories of Political Science and Political Larps: Two Audiences.” Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action. 2016, 111-118.
[48] Moylan, Tom. Becoming Utopian: The Culture and Politics of Radical Transformation. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic (2021), p. 31.
[49] Marsden, Mariah and Kelsey Paige Mason. “Consumable Play: A Performative Model of Actual Play Networks.” Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games. McFarland, 2021.
[50] Tom Moylan’s Becoming Utopian: The Culture and Politics of Radical Transformation is a recent and thorough discussion of utopian praxis. Though I do not have the space to address the full history of utopianism in this chapter, Moylan’s work connects to many other excellent scholars in applied Marxism and socialism, utopian social theory, and utopianism as radical political intervention, including Ruth Levitas, Erik Olin Wright, China Miéville, as well as revolutionary activists.
[51] Bloch’s work on concrete and abstract utopias, along with his concept of “educated hope,” are addressed first in The Principle of Hope and refined in Natural Hope and Human Dignity.
[52] The discussion referenced here is my continued work in utopian and dystopian rhetoric. Currently, the study of utopian and dystopian rhetoric is the focus of my dissertation, and to date has only been previously addressed in conference presentations. My working definitions are as follows:
Utopian rhetoric is the intentional reference to images, symbols, events, practices, places, and/or theories, either real or fictionalized, which evoke a sentiment of societal progress and change, hopeful futurity, or an idealized end-state of affairs, in order to encourage action, provoke, or elicit a response. Depending on the rhetorical purpose and context, “utopia” may also evoke sentiments of absurdity or being unrealistic if leveraged against an opposing audience. Dystopian rhetoric is the intentional reference to images, symbols, events, practices, places, and/or theories, either real or fictionalized, which evoke a sentiment of societal regression and negative changes, oppression of certain populations alongside elevation of others, or a nightmarish end-state of affairs, in order to encourage action, provoke, or elicit a response. While utopian rhetoric is often used to imagine and elevate one’s own visions, dystopian rhetoric can both be leveraged against another group’s aspirations or as a warning against your own group’s visions.
[53] Clarke, Arthur C. “The Awakening.” Future Science Fiction, 2.5 (Jan 1952): 83.
[54] ‘My problem with this kind of “diversity”’ [Forum post] (artic_fox, 18 April 2022). Topic: [List] TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies. <www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/list-ttrpg-guide-to-woke-companies/2790/>.
[55] Claeys 61
[56] Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction 8
[57] (qtd. Abbott 339)
[58] Although sometimes mistaken as being of the same genre, the main difference between dystopia and anti-utopia is where the critique is aimed: where a dystopia provides a warning or critique regarding features of society, anti-utopias locate their “criticism [in] utopianism or of some particular eutopia” (Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction 9). In this genre, the structure of society as it reflects utopian principles is the author’s focus for critique, rather than highlighting some aspect of society to improve. As a note, Sargent has addressed his definitions of these genres in publications throughout his career, including but not limited to his articles, “Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” (1994) and “In Defense of Utopia” (2016). Although Very Short Introduction texts are often only used as informative, rather than argumentative, works, as of Sargent’s publication, “Utopian Matters” (2021), he upholds the Very Short Introduction text as his most condensed and updated with regards to the Three Faces of Utopianism and definitions.
[59] Chapter 1.
[60] Levitas, Ruth. “Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia.” Utopian Studies 1.2 (1990), p. 15
[61] Vieira, Fátima. “The Four Modes of Thinking Framed by Utopian Discursivity. Or, Why We Need Utopia.” Utopia(s) – Worlds and Frontiers of the Imaginary. 2016, p. 28.
[62] Ibid, p. 30.
[63] Sargent, Lyman Tower. “Ideology and Utopia: Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur.” Journal of Political Ideologies 13.3 (2008), p. 267.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Including but not limited to such work as: Stuart, Robert. Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth. Palgrave MacMillan (2022) and Pop, Doru. “Popular Culture Wars: Racism, Gender and Empire and the Transformations of 21st Century Capitalism.” Ekphrasis (2022), p. 5-48.
[66] Pop, Doru. “Popular Culture Wars: Racism, Gender and Empire and the Transformations of 21st Century Capitalism.” Ekphrasis (2022), p. 5-48.
Campbell, Joel. “Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Men/Women: The Politics and IR of Lord of the Rings.” The Politics and International Relations of Fantasy Films and Television. Palgrave Macmillan (2023).
[67] While the forum topic’s first post has the original list of red, yellow, and green-labeled companies, shortly after the Twitter user(s), Legion / @ShintoNephilim posted about the list, users on the “Woke Companies” forum notified the original poster, Ocule, that “your google doc has been found by communists and utterly wrecked” [Forum post] (RPGPundit, 5 Sept 2021). Topic: [List] TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies. <https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/list-ttrpg-guide-to-woke-companies/msg1186251/#msg1186251>. Since the Google Doc was re-uploaded, the aforementioned title, a foreword, FAQ, and several entries on the list have been added or revised.
[68] Barnett, David. “George RR Martin defends Game of Thrones rape as portraying reality of war.” The Guardian, 4 June 2015. <theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/04/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-rape-reality-of-war>.
[69] Another resource regarding historical attempts at gender inclusion in D&D is Aaron Trammel’s “Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons and Dragons.” Trammel’s analytical archive includes original discussions of ways in which to include women and their character counterparts in games and TTRPG systems. Trammel, Aaron. “Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons and Dragons.” Analog Game Studies (2014). <analoggamestudies.org/2014/10/constructing-the-female-body-in-role-playing-games/>.
[70] As of 2021, Chris Perkins’ statement on “D&D Canon” clearly states that Dungeons and Dragon’s canon ‘begins with its core rulebooks,’ and works to distance the current brand from any novels, films, video games, and settings that came before. The reasoning? ‘We make a conscious effort to preserve as many opportunities as possible for DMs to play with their own ideas. . . The DM or player remains the ultimate arbiter of what’s true in their expressions of D&D.’ Perkins, Christopher. “D&D Canon.” Dungeons and Dragons, 29 Jul 2021. <https://dnd.wizards.com/news/dnd-canon>.
[71] Trammel, Aaron. “How Dungeons and Dragons Appropriated the Orient.” Analog Game Studies (2016). <analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/how-dungeons-dragons-appropriated-the-orient/>.
[72] Wizards of the Coast / D&D Team. ‘Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.’ Dungeons & Dragons, 17 June 2020. <dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd>
[73] Wolf, Michael. “The Misogyny at the Core of Our Hobby.” Stargazer’s World, 26 August 2020. < https://stargazersworld.com/2020/08/26/the-misogyny-at-the-core-of-our-hobby/>.
[74] Wizards of the Coast / D&D Team. ‘Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.’ Dungeons & Dragons, 17 June 2020. <dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd>
[75] As an important note of comparison, Paizo, the company which produces Pathfinder and Starfinder, also had a statement released on June 4, 2020. This statement, titled, “Black Lives Matter,” specifically named “George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other Black Americans killed by law enforcement.” Paizo then followed up on this statement on June 22 to address their adventure path, Agents of Edgewatch, which was set to be released in July 2020. In that statement, Paizo specifically addresses their design intent, how certain aspects of the adventure missed the mark, how they would address alternative approaches to character creation and play that were not associated with police themes, and ended the statement with discussing the charities that part of their profits would benefit, including “the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Race Forward, the Bail Project. . . [and] Black-oriented charities.”
The People of Paizo. “Black Lives Matter.” Paizo, 4 June 2020. <https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sh8w?Black-Lives-Matter>.
Mona, Erik. “Agents of Edgewatch Update.” Paizo, 22 June 2020. <https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sh9r?Agents-of-Edgewatch-Update>.
[76] Wizards of the Coast / D&D Team. ‘Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.’ Dungeons & Dragons, 17 June 2020. <dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd>
[77] Ibid.
[78] Ibid.
[79] The diversity commitment actually states that they have “not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show – working with a Romani consultant – the Vistani in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.” While Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft (May 2021) is certainly one of these two books mentioned, it is unclear at this point which other book is being referenced. Some have speculated that the character options and locations which will be featured in The Book of Many Things (Summer 2023) will include Vistani, but as of writing, there are no Vistani-focused books scheduled for publication.
[80] Since the time of writing, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (September 2021), Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons (October 2021), Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos (December 2021), Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep (March 2022), Monsters of the Multiverse (May 2022), Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel (July 2022), Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (August 2022), Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (October 2022), Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen (December 2022), and Keys from the Golden Vault (February 2023) were published.
[81] Player’s Handbook, p. 41.
[82] Player’s Handbook, p. 24.
[83] Wizards of the Coast / D&D Team. ‘Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.’ Dungeons & Dragons, 17 June 2020. <dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd>.
[84] An important note here is, while Wildemount was published by Wizards, many would consider the text to be primarily the intellectual work of Matthew Mercer from Critical Role. While my analysis of the setting book still stands, there is a more nuanced discussion needed to fully parse out the implications of Critical Role’s (political and economic) relationship with Wizards.
[85] Eberron: Rising from the Last War. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast (2019), p. 17.
[86] As an observation, the official Adventurer’s League, which demonstrates how Wizards selects from their official texts to be part of an effort to produce more consistent, standard rules and games does not currently feature all of their source texts. Tasha’s was recently added as one of the PHB+1 options and included the customizable ability scores as permitted.
[87] Eberron, p. 31-32.
[88] Eberron, p. 32.
[89] Player’s Handbook, p. 41.
[90] Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast (2020), p. 178.
[91] Player’s Handbook, p. 41.
[92] Wildemount, p. 177.
[93] Wildemount, p. 178.
[94] Eberron, p. 20.
[95] Eberron, p. 22.
[96] Eberron, p. 22.
[97] Wildemount, p. 162-163.
[98] Muncy, Julie. “D&D’s Culturally Sensitive Strahd Revamp Is Here, But It’ll Cost You [Updated].” Gizmodo, 27 Jul 2020. < https://gizmodo.com/d-ds-culturally-sensitive-strahd-revamp-is-here-but-it-1844521228>.
[99] Ibid.
[100] Ezmerelda’s role as an NPC in Curse of Strahd, in both the original and the Revamped edition, is one of immense importance. However, her original characterization is one rife with the same stereotypes which plagued the Vistani in addition to the ableist treatment of her prosthesis. In the original, the prosthesis was something kept hidden – as if a token of shame or weakness – but in the Revamped edition, this description is revised. As Shelly Jones argues in “Blinded By the Roll: The Critical Fail of Disability in D&D,” “we receive mixed messages about her disability and how she feels about it. . . her disability is negatively and ambiguously portrayed by the text as we try to navigate the disparity between the visual representation and the rhetorical description.” Jones, Shelly. “Blinded By the Roll: The Critical Fail of Disability in D&D.” Analog Game Studies (2018), <https://analoggamestudies.org/2018/03/blinded-by-the-roll-the-critical-fail-of-disability-in-dd/>.
[101] Ibid.
[102] Wizards of the Coast / D&D Team. ‘Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.’ Dungeons & Dragons, 17 June 2020. <dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd>
[103] Wizards of the Coast / D&D Team. ‘Diversity and Dungeons & Dragons.’ Dungeons & Dragons, 17 June 2020. <dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd>
[104] Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast (2020), p. 7.
[105] Tasha’s, p. 7.
[106] Tasha’s, p. 7.
[107] Grey, Orrin. ‘Tasha’s Cauldron of Too Little, Too Late.’ Unwinnable, 17 December 2020. <unwinnable.com/2020/12/17/tashas-cauldron-of-too-little-too-late/>.
[108] Carter, Chase. ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ first attempt to address RPG’s race problems disappoints its community.’ Dicebreaker, 24 November 2020. <dicebreaker.com/games/dungeons-and-dragons-5e/news/dnd-addresses-race-problems-disappoints-community>.
[109] Limbong, Andrew. “’Dungeons and Dragons’ Tries to Banish Racist Stereotypes.” NPR, 29 June 2020. <npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/29/884824236/dungeons-dragons-tries-to-banish-racist-stereotypes>.
[110] Crawford, Jeremy. ‘Customizable Origins.’ Sage Advice. Dungeons and Dragons, 16 October 2020. <youtube.com/watch?v=f9ljeaSqONA>.
[111] Tasha’s, p. 7.
[112] Player’s Handbook. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast (2014), p. 24.
[113] Haeck, James. “The Legend of Drizzt: Becoming the Face of the Forgotten Realms.” D&D Beyond, 20 August 2018. <dndbeyond.com/posts/300-the-legend-of-drizzt-becoming-the-face-of-the>.
[114] Barber, Graeme. “Decolonization and Integration in D&D.” POC Gamer, 08 February 2019. <pocgamer.com/2019/08/02/decolonization-and-integration-in-dd/>.
[115] Tasha’s, p. 7.
[116] Stubby the Rocket. ‘Wizards of the Coast Freelancer Quits Due to Hostile Work Environment.’ Tor, 6 July 2020. <tor.com/2020/07/06/wizards-of-the-coast-freelancer-quits-due-to-hostile-work-environment/>. Since leaving Wizards of the Coast, Orion Black worked for Dropout’s Dimension 20 as Creative Director since February 2021. As of November 2022, Black “very amicably” left Dropout and Dimension 20 to pursue other “creative adventures.” Black, Orion. ‘So, I no longer work’ [Twitter post] (@OrionDBlack, 18 November 2022). <https://twitter.com/oriondblack/status/1593687196094955521?s=46&t=uL5WpCfVavQSRfD16FJA6A>.
[117] Carter, Chase. ‘An author is questioning Wizards of the Coast’s “problematic” changes to his adventure in the newest D&D 5E sourcebook.’ Dicebreaker, 24 March 2021. <dicebreaker.com/games/dungeons-and-dragons-5e/news/dungeons-dragons-candlekeep-mysteries-freelance-alterations>.
[118] Hall, Charlie. ‘Next Dungeons & Dragons campaign book reboots the many realms of Ravenloft.’ Polygon, 23 February 2021. <polygon.com/2021/2/23/22295817/dungeons-dragons-ravenloft-reboot-van-richtens-guide-release-date-price>.
[119] Whitbrook, James. “How Dungeons and Dragons’ Next Sourcebook Expands Its View of Horror.” Gizmodo, 23 February 2021. <https://gizmodo.com/how-dungeons-dragons-next-sourcebook-expands-its-view-1846309760>.
[120] Perkins, Christopher. “Leveling Up Our Creative Process: Learning from Spelljammer.” D&D Beyond, 10 November 2022. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1375-leveling-up-our-creative-process-learnings-from>.
[121] Bradford, Tempest K. “Ravenloft and Har’Akir and Ankhtepot, Oh My!” K Tempest Bradford, 30 May 2021. <https://ktempestbradford.com/ravenloft-harakir-ankhtepot/>.
[122] Jones, Shelly. “The Psychological Abuse of Curse of Strahd.” Analog Game Studies (2017). < https://analoggamestudies.org/2017/01/the-psychological-abuse-of-curse-of-strahd/>.
[123] Hall, Charlie. ‘Dungeons & Dragons retcons one of its most problematic characters.’ Polygon, 18 May 2021. <polygon.com/22440453/dungeons-dragons-ezmerelda-davenir-retcon-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft>.
[124] Culver, Jordan. “’Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel’: 16 writers, all people of color, shape new Dungeons & Dragons Book.” USA Today, 20 July 2022. <https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2022/07/20/journeys-through-radiant-citadel-dungeons-and-dragons/10096026002/>.
[125] Hall, Charlie. “Dungeons & Dragons’ next anthology is written entirely by Black and brown authors.” Polygon, 22 Mar 2022. <https://www.polygon.com/22989321/dnd-journeys-through-the-radiant-citadel-release-date-price>.
[126] Higgins, David M. “A Fierce, Fragile Utopia: A Conversation with Ajit A. George.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 24 Sept 2022. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-fierce-fragile-utopia-a-conversation-with-ajit-a-george/>.
[127] These changes to monster stat blocks and descriptions were controversial, and Ray Winninger, on behalf of D&D, took the lead on several PR responses, which justified the changes and rejected how the errata were shared as evidence of “political correctness.” Winninger, Ray. “Clarifying Our Recent Errata.” Book Updates: Sage Advice. 16 Dec 2021. < https://dnd.wizards.com/sage-advice/book-updates>.
[128] Hall, Charlie. “D&D’s attempts to root out racism in its books have taken a step backward.” Polygon, 31 Aug 2022. < https://www.polygon.com/23330621/dnd-spelljammer-hadozee-racist>.
[129] Carter, Justin. “Spelljammer’s Racist Hadozee Lore Removed, Wizards of the Coast Apologizes.” Gizmodo, 4 Sept 2022. <https://gizmodo.com/d-d-spelljammer-hadozee-racism-apology-1849495449>.
[130] Jackson, Claire. “Amid Criticism, Wizards of the Coast Quietly Removes Racist Lore from Dungeons & Dragons [Updated].” Kotaku, 2 September 2022. <https://kotaku.com/dnd-dungeons-dragons-spelljammer-hadozee-wizards-coast-1849491335>.
[131] “Statement on the Hadozee.” Dungeons & Dragons, 2 Sept 2022. <https://dnd.wizards.com/news/statement-hadozee>.
[132] Ibid.
[133] Carter, Chase. “Dungeons and Dragons 5E removes racist Hadozee depiction from Spelljammer, apologises for ‘offensive material.’” Dicebreaker, 6 September 2022.
[134] Perkins, Christopher. “Leveling Up Our Creative Process: Learning from Spelljammer.” D&D Beyond, 10 November 2022. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1375-leveling-up-our-creative-process-learnings-from>.
[135] Ibid.
[136] Ibid.
[137] Ibid.
[138] Codega, Linda. “Why Are Dungeons & Dragons Fans So Upset?” Gizmodo, 27 January 2023. <https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-and-dragons-ogl-1-1-explained-wizards-of-the-c-1850006448>.
[139] In short, the OGL and the connected Systems Reference Document (SRD) (which has Dungeons and Dragons-specific game rules) allows for creators to make their own content that is compatible with the game’s systems. Creators do not need permission or exclusive contracts with Wizards in order to sell materials, as long as their content is protected and covered by the OGL and no official rules outside of those in the SRD are included. Besides independent creators, other companies, such as Kobold Press and Paizo, use(d) the OGL and SRD documents in creating their own companies. Paizo’s first edition of Pathfinder originally emerged out of D&D’s 3.5 edition using the OGL and SRD, and has since further modified their use of these documents in their second edition. Even with Wizards backing down from the new OGL, both Kobold Press and Paizo have stayed committed to their own plans to prevent OGL issues in the future, with Project Black Flag and the Open Creative RPG License respectively. Law, Eric. “Dungeons and Dragons Competitors Paizo and Kobold Press Continue Plans Despite OGL Controversy Ending.” GameRant, 30 January 2023. <https://gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-paizo-kobold-press-continue-plans-ogl-controversy-orc-project-black-flag/>.
[140] @TieflingMelissa’s mirror copy of the original leak: <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BXYQJ0ulww7BoZhjMHrZgQ5YrjfPRIma/view?usp=sharing>. The original was shared through RollForCombat / BattleZoo here: <http://ogl.battlezoo.com/>.
[141] DND Beyond Staff. “An Update on the Open Game License (OGL). D&D Beyond, 13 Jan 2023. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-game-license-ogl>.
[142] Brink, Kyle. “A Working Conversation About the Open Game License (OGL).” D&D Beyond, 18 Jan 2023. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1428-a-working-conversation-about-the-open-game-license>.
Brink, Kyle. “Starting the OGL ‘Playtest.’” D&D Beyond, 19 Jan 2023. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1432-starting-the-ogl-playtest>.
[143] Brink, Kyle. “OGL 1.0a & Creative Commons.” D&D Beyond, 27 Jan 2023. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1439-ogl-1-0a-creative-commons>.
[144] DND Beyond Staff. “An Update on the Open Game License (OGL). D&D Beyond, 13 Jan 2023. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-game-license-ogl>.
[145] Brink, Kyle. “Starting the OGL ‘Playtest.’” D&D Beyond, 19 Jan 2023. <https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1432-starting-the-ogl-playtest>.
[146] An expansive discussion of NuTSR’s Star Frontier’s playtest is available through NoHateinGaming’s twitter page, along with links and screenshots from the document. ‘Dave Johnson & NuTSR’s ‘Star Frontiers’’ [Twitter post] (@NoHateInGaming, 19 Jul 2022). <https://twitter.com/NoHateInGaming/status/1549479240390901760>.
[147] Hall, Charlie. “D&D publisher requests injunction against competitor, citing ‘blatantly racist and transphobic’ content.” Polygon, 13 Sept 2022. < https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/23349686/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-vs-nutsr-tsr-justin-lanasa-racist-transphobic-star-frontiers>.
[148] Ibid.
[149] Higgins, David M. “A Fierce, Fragile Utopia: A Conversation with Ajit A. George.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 24 Sept 2022. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-fierce-fragile-utopia-a-conversation-with-ajit-a-george/>.
[150] Ibid.
[151] Ibid.
[152] Now in its third edition, Thompson’s combat wheelchair has updated rules and minis created by Strata Miniatures. Thompson, Sara. “The Combat Wheelchair v.3.” <drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KVW9Hv0QDPB6IiWbVY6RVi13S3W3bGuy>
[153] Davis, Sally. “Play with us however you roll: combat wheelchair rules for D&D 5e.” 20 September 2020. <paxsims.wordpress.com/2020/09/20/play-with-us-however-you-roll-combat-wheelchair-rules-for-dd-5e/>. Gailloreto, Coleman. “Why D&D’s Combat Wheelchair is a Good Start for Disabled Representation.” ScreenRant, 31 May 2021. <https://screenrant.com/dungeons-dragons-combat-wheelchair-disabled-representation-tabletop-rpg/>.
[154] Much of the objection to Thompson’s Combat Wheelchair came from arguments around whether disabled characters would exist in fantasy worlds, why disabled adventurers would ever be imagined or wanted, and, of course, more direct insults and ableist language directed at Thompson and others on social media. Most recently, Thompson has also added to conversations around the OGL as well as Wizards’ inclusion initiatives, saying, “WotC was not there for disabled folks who received backlash, ableist rhetoric, and even death threats when I released the Combat Wheelchair and it started a discussion in the community.” @mustangart, 13 February 2023. <https://twitter.com/mustangsart/status/1625003410884816896>.
[155] Tasha’s, pp. 139-141.
[156] Tasha’s, p. 141.
[157] Candlekeep Mysteries. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast (2021), p. 4.
[158] Candlekeep, p. 4.
[159] Tasha’s, p. 141. The full quote is, ‘There are many ways to mediate this discussion [about soft and hard limits], and you might want to do some research to find an approach that might work well for your group.’
[160] Michael Stokes writes about queer and crip characters historically featured or excluded in Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks. Stokes, Michael. “Access to the Page: Queer and Disabled Characters in Dungeons and Dragons.” Analog Game Studies (2017). <https://analoggamestudies.org/2017/05/access-to-the-page-queer-and-disabled-characters-in-dungeons-dragons/>.
[161] Ravenloft, p. 187.
[162] Ravenloft, p. 190.
[163] Ravenloft, p. 45-59.
[164] Ravenloft, p. 46.
[165] Ravenloft, p. 48.
[166] Ravenloft, p. 185-190.
[167] Rogers, Nathaniel. “A World Where They Belonged”: Queer Women’s Use of a Dungeons & Dragons Game to Experiment With, Express, and Explore Identity.” Proquest, 2020, p. 10.
[168] In reference to Gary Gygax’s afterward in the 1979 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide which states: ‘As you hew the line with respect to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also be certain the game is mastered by you and not by your players. Within the broad parameters given in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons volumes, you are creator and final arbiter. By ordering things as they should be, the game as a whole first, you campaign next and your participants thereafter, you will be playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as it was meant to be.’ p. 230.
[169] Anderson, Julia. “D&D’s OGL Controversy Has Pathfinder Selling Out at a Mind-Blowing Rate.” CBR, 26 Jan 2023. <https://www.cbr.com/dnd-ogl-controversy-pathfinder-selling-out-core-rules-beginners-kits/>.
[170] McCauley, Tara. “D&D Beyond’s Account Management Page Crashes as Users Cancel En Masse.” CBR, 13 Jan 2023.
[171] Russell, Mollie. “Wizards says you don’t ‘need to trust’ it with DnD – I disagree.” Wargamer, 8 February 2023. <https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/trust-wizards>.
[172] Reinbold, Lotte. “Lines and veils, and other RPG safety tools, open up tabletop roleplaying for everyone.” Dicebreaker, 29 Apr 2021. <https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/roleplaying-game/opinion/lines-and-veils-rpg-safety-tools>.
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Kelsey Paige Mason is a PhD candidate studying nineteenth-century utopian and dystopian fiction at the Ohio State University. Her previous work in game studies appears in the collection Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games (2021), and she was recently featured on the podcast, First Person Scholar, to chat about the chapter and ‘consumable play.’ Her work in nineteenth-century life writings and in utopian and dystopian studies can be found in the collections, Diary as Literature (2020), and Critical Insights: Animal Farm (2018), respectively.
This article will be included in the forthcoming collection Utopia on the Tabletop (Ping Press). Thanks to the British Science Fiction Association, the Sussex Humanities Lab (Open Practice Group), and the University of Sussex School of Media, Arts and Humanities.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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