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.