I assume you meant they wanted him to be a black guy and marketing wanted him to be white? I hadn't heard that story before, or any others like that regarding WOTC, but it also seems incomplete - what was marketing's reasoning for that? I would assume it was based on market research that said "most of the people playing D&D are white, this will connect with them better"? Marketing and advertising decisions, as far as I know, take all kinds of audience factors into account when deciding who to "target". Personally I think we could all do with a lot less "targeted marketing" for a lot of reasons, but this would hardly be the only instance of it and that does not necessarily make it racist. Deciding that depends on what was in the mind of those who made the decision, which at this point I don't and probably can't know.
I would also assume that Monte's goal was to expand that market by making a different decision. Regdar was the most iconic of the iconics and was used on much of the 3.0 marketing materials so that seems plausible. I think 3.0 would also have succeeded just fine with a black iconic fighter and perhaps 5e is proof of that.
Regarding Redgar, the original intention was to
not have him at all. There is Tordek, the iconic dwarven fighter. Why would you need two fighter iconics?
Monte said that someday he and the devs then came back from a trip and suddenly marketing had come up with Redgar as they "needed a male human fighter". As employees they tried to fight him but had to suck it up at one point. Todd Lockwood (who was the artist behind the basic races in the 3e compendium) then intentionally left his race vague (he looked a bit asian to me) while further artists made him more white.
That he is "the iconic of iconic" in your eyes clearly shows that this massive marketing move to shift the attention to Redgar was successful because 1) He was not intended to be and 2) once he was, it was clearly not the dev's intention to have him be the "D&D poster child" as they wanted to diversify their characters.
And yes. A black man or one of the other iconics (there are more than enough humans if they really needed "the" iconic to be human) would have probably been as successful had they had the same marketing support.
I think it's easy when your focus is on the game and fantasy rather than the real world to not look at game or setting decisions through this real world filter. That may be considered insensitive if you do have that filter on, but I think Occam's Razor also suggest that any unpopular setting changes (of which there certainly have been many over the years), one should assume a lot of other things first. What is helpful I think for WOTC to know is that there were gamers who were upset by that and attached to that part of the setting, but I'll note that there are a lot of players really attached to Greyhawk and I think they are unlikely to bring that back either.
I kind of agree. If you toss aside all RL baggage (which basically means erasing the person you are and the environment you live in), then fantasy can be just fantasy. But I guess this works for "private fantasy" only. As soon as you share your fantasy with others, you engage as the person you are. Plus, it is hard for someone who comes from a marginalized/minority group to not see stereotypes everywhere. I, for example, remember a time where the "damsel in distress" was found in every second piece of fantasy literature, video game and action movie. And it really turned me off.
And to analyze and criticize a creative work, we kind of have to put on the meta-glasses anyway.
Well, here we differ somewhat. I'm not offended, but I'm not impressed by some of the key elements of that article. I'm interested in what all people think, but I see them as individuals so I don't assume that skin color predicts how people think or what experiences they've had. I don't subscribe much to the idea of assumed group identity based on skin color in this day and age when the world is effectively such a smaller and more diverse place, but I do listen to each person's opinion with interest and treat each person as an individual, to be heard, respected and judged as such.
We are individuals, but also members of particular groups. I really don't want to sound offensive, but white, cis men only start to feel as if they are part of a group right now. As a white women, I've always been an individual, also strongly felt part of the "woman" group but not part of a "white" group. I hated seeing female characters being reduces to "the chick", to the singular female representation in an all-male group. To constantly see them as "the love interest" instead of the hero. I had to struggle with not "being one of those girls" (a notion which is
, but I had to learn that). I guess black people have the same experience when it comes to "their group". Meanwhile, for a very long time, white men had a whole variety of human characteristics portrayed in the media when it came to "their group", which in turn reduced group based stereotypes.
This is not so much of a pre-determined group identity, but rather slightly differing, but nonetheless similar group experiences. And we cannot simply erase these experiences.
PS: I, for example, still cringe when there is more than 60-70% male NPCs in a module without any given reason or when most female NPC are described as something beautiful. It is one thing to create a PC or the occasional NPC who has this characteristic, but at some point I start seeing them as male wish fulfillment :X
