Diversity, Dungeons & Dragons
“An orc warrior: an evil scourge that needs to be slain!”
If that’s our first thought upon seeing an orc: what does that say about us?
Once upon a time back in high school in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons with a small group of friends. They included Aldred (Spanish heritage), Stephen (Polish heritage), Damon (English-Maltese heritage), Russ (English heritage) and Justyn (Singaporean-Australian heritage). My own heritage is Maltese-Irish, yet interestingly, we all considered ourselves of Australian culture. We unconsiously see ourselves all as humans, and yet we rarely think of this commonality; we jump to thinking of what makes us different from each other.
Then we find ourselves jumping into playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), among other games, and choosing to play a character with a “Race” other than the Human. These include sturdy dwarves, graceful elves, and curious halflings, clearly inspired by the hobbits of The Lord of the Rings. Most of the races available to play are similar looking to humans, and generally similar in fair or tan skin tone (at least according to the artwork readily available). And then there’s the evil races we are encouraged to fight to “level up”, including green skinned and savage orcs, nasty “Gremlins”-like goblins, and sinister dark elves - almost exactly like elves, except black skinned and white haired in order to remind us that they are “evil”.
I remember being ok with orcs and goblins being enemies, likely due to familiarity with this “evil races who only want good races to die” trope from Lord of the Rings, but thinking at the time the black skinned dark elves being evil was a little behind the times. Since then I’ve reflected on the entire nature of the “evil races” trope and how it is something I’m not a fan of and started to change in my gaming and writing. From growing recent discussions about diversity, including this thoughtful and widely-shared article from Matthew Gault at Wired, it is clear this topic is on many people’s minds: that the very concept of racial essentialism is an out-dated topic in our evolving world, and that this discussion regarding race and D&D has been a long time coming.
I thought before diving into the debate from my perspective - a privileged white male’s middle class upbringing in Australia - it’s important for me to look at that very heritage of mine and understand my biases. Just what has been my experience and understanding of race and racism? What is the value of having a multiplicity of heritages in the stories and game play of fantasy? Hopefully I can then have a better understanding of my stance, but also be able to better listen to other’s experiences and perspectives, likely very different from mine, in order to grow our mutual love of playing Role Playing Games (RPGs) together, while also recognising key elements that yearn to be updated with the connected orld we are emerging into.
It made me think of other influences I had in my youth leading up to playing Dungeons and Dragons, in particular a fantasy “Choose Your Own Adventure” series called Fighting Fantasy, which was basically a D&D game for a solo player and was as addictive at that age as chocolate to me (the topic of a previous RPX blog post.) Each adventure was a standalone experience, usually where “YOU are the hero” per the book’s tagline, diving into an adventure to save a town / a people / the world from some evil wizard or tyrant. Just this in of itself was hours of fun but there was also the beautiful ink artwork in each book from a range of phenomenal artists (in particular Ian McCaig was a favourite) and the multiple possibilities for playing out the story was always a hit. The writer that really drew my attention was Steve Jackson (an English author, not to be confused with the American author and game-creator of Munhckin and many other games.) My favourite books of Jackson’s were the Sorcery! series, which brought in a few new concepts to the Fighting Fantasy solo game play template: being able to use magic at certain points in the story, and the epic story itself continuing over a series of 4 books (which boggled my early storyteller’s mind) among others. However I love recalling the most awe-inspiring facet of the series for me was the absolute wealth and diversity of cultures represented in the book, with Jackson’s engaging and florid text brought to new dimensions of wonder thanks to the art in the book by John Blanche. The detail and uniqueness of every different character me and village entered, and of the appearance and customs of each cultural group, race and species encountered, really let my imagination take flight. This detail of both look and action also helped me learned who to trust and who not to when making the decisions in the story: initial appearance often times was deceptive, so that’s to be noted, but taken with a grain of salt; what really to look for was how characters acted, both towards you and others, to help you make your decision on their intent.
To give an idea, the first book blew my mind from the very first encounter. The morning you prepare to leave on your mission - your desperate quest to retrieve a magical crown stolen from the king - through a massive gate, located in the great wall separating your country from the wild lands of the north (an early inkling of the influence of China and Asian cultures on this series). The guard giving the final brief for your mission is not of my race, looking humanoid in most regards except that his eyes are slitted like a cat’s eyes. He’s revealed to be what are called sightmasters, who’s eyes help them see long distances, making them valuable as guards for the great gate who can keep watch for any dangers and alert the people early in case of danger. It was Blanche’s art of the character that really blew me away - the robes the sightmaster wore looked heavily influenced by religious garments, to my young mind reminded me of monks from Tibet. That specificity to detail awed me, and questions arose about why the sightmaster wore these robes - was he a monk of some kind too? Was the role of gate guard a holy one to my land’s culture? What was both infuriating and delightful to my young reader’s mind was that this was never answered, a very useful teachable moment for a story-teller - “Show, don’t tell” and “a picture tells a thousand words.”
What strikes me now is that very little was known about the country I came from in the game, that I was fighting for. The entire experience of the game was focussed on the mission into the wilds and the experience of being introduced to every group of people and culture in the lands beyond what I knew. I don’t know if that was the purpose of Steve Jackson in writing this, but from looking over the book’s design again I believe it must have been a key goal of his, to introduce this new world to the reader and make their own decisions on the people they encounter through their own experience.
What followed was scene after scene of new and different characters, creatures and locations, sometimes dangerous, often thrilling. The characters you meet appear to be more Asian than European throughout. Whether I was speaking with suspicious human townsfolk, hearty half-orc villagers, mischievous forest spirits, or territorial goblins, I realise I did not notice this feature until many years later. Clothing detail was also paid attention to, in styles I was unused to from a Euro-centric based upbringing. Each village or cultural group encountered had customised variations to their clothing differentiating them from the other groups, intermingled with customs that made them unique - one villages people all wore their hair tied up in a bun on their heads, another village had a festival where the children took over the village for one day and commanded the adults to perform all manner of humourous or challenging tasks for their delight.
There’s many more points I could talk about, but there are two elements with the communities / “races” in the book that have come to mind in this discussion of race representation and diversity.
1. Prejudicial bias is dangerous to survival - In the third book, set in a huge wasteland wilderness you need to traverse so as to get to the wizard’s fortress in the final book, you come across a group of travellers, made up of a race known as Black Elves. They are not represented as sinister slave-drivers like the dark elves of D&D, nor the “graceful beings of the forest” like Tolkein’s elves (whom I always felt uncomfortable about, as they often showed some superior attitudes towards the “lesser'' mortal races). The Black elves were a community of traders who roamed the wild lands in their caravans connecting with communities along the way to barter their wares. They were untrusting of outsiders, a common trait to nearly every character in this desolate, lawless land, so not an inherent “racial” trait. At first they are armed and suspicious, and you have to show yourself as peaceful to be welcomed in. If you are careless and disrespectful, you’d be in trouble - they’ll truss you up, take all your goods, and leave you for the crows; but if you treated them with respect and stood up for yourself, you’d gain their favour, and learn they too just wanted to make trade, hare good food, and tell good stories. Your actions and attitudes towards them informed how they treated you: it was a standoff, the testing for and a need for trust made real through both yours and their actions; with trust to be gained through sharing stories, food or experiences like in pretty much any community I’ve encountered. This challenged the automatic defensive attitudes of some fantasy games I’d played, where your “stranger sensibilities” are honed - as soon as you see someone who looks strange or dangerous, you are goaded to attack them. It made the storytelling much more interesting, surprising, and a challenge to be worked out for a mutual benefit to my character and the Black Elves community. Yes, it felt more “real”, whatever that means, inclusive, immersive, more life-like and less pulpy / stereotypical; I’ve used this encounter as the basis for scenes I’ve used in my own games to great effect with my players.
This theme appears throughout the series, and was a major influence on how I see the way people treat each other, no matter their background, and how I wanted to tell stories.
2. Appearances can be deceiving, Actions speak truth - here’s where the story really captured my imagination and interest, and has definitely shaped my morality, my motivations in storytelling, and how I engage with people in the world.
The example I have links back to the Sightmasters of Book 1: you meet them again much later in the finale of Book 4, surprisingly in the heart of the fortress of the big bad enemy (the Archmage, the powerful wizard who arranged the theft of the crown of your kingdom and kicked off the drama of the entire story). I love that the game presents them as a welcome sight to you at first as their culture are respected and considered kind in your home land. However you soon learn these sightmasters have their own agenda, and are not the considerate people you are used to: instead, you very quickly learn that if you are not careful, they will take everything from you and hang you out to dry or have you killed. Their selfish and violent attitudes appear to have been shaped by and reflect the place they are in - the dog-eat-dog fortress of the archmage. A far cry from the respectful culture you remember of your homeland.
I found this to be true in life at that young age and it continues to ring true to me today. Time and again in this series you are tested in your understanding of the world by using your wits and senses to test what’s in front of you rather than basing decisions on assumptions of what’s good or evil. Many creatures test you to see if you can be trusted, and in return you have to decide whether to tell the truth, to lie, or find somewhere in between based on what you see in front of you. Deception, disguise, illusion, are presented time and again through characters who have some power in the game or something you need. Many characters appear strange or monstrous, testing your preconceptions about the characters you meet, and the only pattern seems to be how they act towards you and the “tells'' they provide (like in poker, where people can unconsciously give their intentions away) through well-detailed clues in their manner and actions . I found this incredibly appealing, like a detective story, and over time honed my attention to keep an eye out for these tell-tale signs of the natures of the characters I met through their actions, rather than their looks. I still find this enthralling to play and a delight to run with the players I engage - can they trust the person through what they see, and if so, why do they trust them?
There are many, many more characters, cultures, and scenarios in the book that were surprising and challenging to the standard. I’m continually challenged and thrilled to explore these concepts in role playing games, and how I look at the way I perceive and treat people in life. The world would be a much better place with a self-awareness of how you look at people, and to judge people by their actions, not how they look. I am glad I had the chance to read the Sorcery! Series and hope you get the chance to one day - highly recommended.
What stories were the greatest influence when you began role-playing? And if your tastes have changeds, what stories & games influence you today? I’m very keen to hear your experiences of this, please share below!
Wishing you connection and creativity, Ian.
