Measure Twice, Cut Twice

Those who have been following along with my adventures in quarantine may have noticed that I’ve gotten heavily back into tabletop gaming, at least conceptually. Shortly before the lockdown began, I dug into D&D 5e for the first time, and found that I really liked it.

Gaming is not a new thing for me. I’ve been playing – or, often more accurately, thinking about playing – almost for as long as I can remember. I’ve even worked in the field more than once, writing fiction and the occasional piece of gaming content for Privateer Press. As recently as November, I actually embarked on a large work-for-hire contract that I can’t reveal just yet, but it was tabletop gaming related.

As I’ve gotten more heavily back into that world, I have written a few times about the racism problems that are baked into these kinds of games and Tolkien-derived fantasy in general. I don’t have a good, simple fix for it. I don’t think there is a simple fix for it. And I know that it’s unrealistic to expect one fix to solve the problem, anyway. After all, the problem is much bigger than just fantasy.

Hopefully I make all that clear in my latest piece over at Unwinnable, where I take Wizards of the Coast (the makers of Dungeons & Dragons) to task for the inadequacy of their latest gesture in that direction, contained in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, their most recent supplement for 5e.

It is, as I say in the piece, absolutely better than nothing, but this problem deserves a response that’s better than that, and, as the producers of the biggest game in this corner of the market, we should hold Wizards to a higher standard.

I have never yet published a piece of gaming media over which I had much creative control. But when I work, in this field or any other, I try to exert what control I do have to reduce the amount of potentially harmful material that I inadvertently disseminate. And I’m always going to fall short. Which is why, each time, I try to do a little better.

So should we all.