D&D 3E/3.5 Diversity in D&D Third Edition

With 3rd Ed, our main goal was to return D&D to its roots, such as with Greyhawk deities and the return of half-orcs. By staying true to the feel of D&D, we helped the gaming audience accept the sweeping changes that we made to the rules system.

With 3rd Ed, our main goal was to return D&D to its roots, such as with Greyhawk deities and the return of half-orcs. By staying true to the feel of D&D, we helped the gaming audience accept the sweeping changes that we made to the rules system.

One way we diverged from the D&D heritage, however, was by making the game art more inclusive. People of color, for example, were hard to find in earlier editions, and, when they did make appearance, it wasn’t always for the best. Luckily for us, Wizards of the Coast had an established culture of egalitarianism, and we were able to update the characters depicted in the game to better reflect contemporary sensibilities.

dnd-party.jpg

A few years before 3E, the leadership at Wizards had already encouraged me to go whole-hog with the multicultural look of the RPG Everway (1995). In this world-hopping game, we provided players and Gamemasters with scores of color art cards to inspire them as they created their characters and NPCs. The art featured people and settings that looked like they could have come from fantasy versions of places all around the earth, and the gender balance was great. I once got an email from a black roleplayer who said that Everway had forever changed the way he roleplayed, so I know that the game’s multicultural look was meaningful to some gamers out there. With D&D, we took the game in the same direction, but not nearly as far. The core setting has always resembled medieval Europe, and we expanded the diversity of the characters while still maintaining the medieval milieu.

The characters that players see the most are the “fab four,” the four iconic characters that we used repeatedly in our art and in our examples of play. Two are men (the human cleric and the dwarf fighter) and two are women (the elf wizard and the halfling rogue). Given the demographics of gamers in 2000, the implication that half of all D&D characters are female was a bit of a stretch. The only complaints we got, however, were about the introductory Adventure Game, where the characters were pregenerated, with names and genders assigned to them. Some young men would have preferred fewer female characters and more males to choose from. None of us worried too much about those complaints.

In addition to the main four characters, we also assigned a particular character to represent each of the other classes, with that character appearing in examples of play and in art. The four human characters comprised a white man (the cleric), a white woman (the paladin), a black woman (the monk), and an Asian man (the sorcerer). The remaining four nonhuman iconics were three men and one woman. It was a trick to strike the right balance in assigning fantasy races and genders to all the classes and to assign ethnicities to the human characters, but the iconic characters seemed to be a big hit, and I think the diversity was part of the appeal.

Somewhat late in the process, the marketing team added Regdar, a male fighter, to the mix of iconic characters. We designers weren’t thrilled, and as the one who had drawn up the iconic characters I was a little chapped. My array of iconic characters did not include a human male fighter, and that’s the most common D&D character ever, so the marketing team gave us one. We carped a little that he meant adding a second white man to the array of characters, but at least he was dark enough to be ambiguously ethnic. Regdar proved popular, and if the marketing team was looking for an attractive character to publicize, they got one.

Back in 1E, Gary Gygax had used the phrase “he or she” as the default third person singular pronoun, a usage that gave the writing a legalistic vibe that probably suited it. In 2E, the text stated up front that it was just going to use “he” because grammatically it’s gender-neutral. Even in 1989, insisting that “he” is gender neutral was tone deaf. By the time I was working on 3E, I had been dealing with the pronoun issue for ten years. In Ars Magica (1987), we wrote everything in second person so that we could avoid gendered pronouns. The rules said things like, “You can understand your familiar” instead of “The wizard can understand his/her/their familiar.” In Over the Edge (1992), we used “he” for the generic player and “she” for the generic gamemaster, which felt balanced and helped the reader keep the two roles separate. That sort of usage became standard for Atlas Games’s roleplaying games. Personally, I use singular-they whenever I can get away with it, but 20 years ago that was still generally considered unorthodox. For 3E, I suggested that we tie the pronouns to the iconic characters. The iconic paladin was a woman, so references to paladins in the rules were to “her.” I thought we’d catch flak from someone about this usage, but I never heard fans complaining.

One topic we needed to settle was whether monsters that were gendered as female in folklore, such as a lamia, should be exclusively female in D&D. I figured we should ditch gender limits wherever we could, but an editor argued that gender was important for the identity of a monster like the lamia. I asked, “Is that because it is in woman’s nature to deceive and destroy men?” Luring and destroying men is a common trope for female-gendered monsters, with the lamia as an example. “Yes, it is” said the editor, but she was laughing, and I had made my point. You can see an illustration of a male lamia in the 3E Monster Manual.

While we incorporated Greyhawk’s deities into 3rd Ed, we had no intention of picking up Greyhawk’s description of various human ethnic groups, corresponding more or less to ethnicities found on Earth. For gamers who cared about the Greyhawk canon, the Asian sorcerer would be from a lightly described territory to the west and the black monk would be a “Touv” from the jungles of Hepmonaland. Touvs in 2E were defined as having a penalty to their Intelligence scores, and we sure didn’t want to send any players in that direction. In 3E, the Asian and black characters were just humans, full stop.

The good news is that the gaming audience rolled with the iconic characters featuring people of color and women. With 5th Ed, the design team picked up where we left off and have pursued diversity further. The diverse cast of characters goes a long way in making D&D look modern and mature.
 

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Jonathan Tweet

Jonathan Tweet

D&D 3E, Over the Edge, Everway, Ars Magica, Omega World, Grandmother Fish

ad_hoc

(she/her)
Then we have the quite reasonable question: Why did you choose your setting in this way?

Yes, this is the same as the "but my character would be a jerk" excuse.

A player who makes a rotten character is still responsible for that rotten character's actions.

The same with the creation of a setting. The person who created it is responsible for its properties.

I'm glad the 5e design team decided to lay down a fantasy framework which is inclusive. Now, the excuse that it is 'just the way it is' doesn't hold water.
 

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Then we have the quite reasonable question: Why did you choose your setting in this way?

The setting should enable interesting stories to be told. If your setting is set in the real-world, it should adhere to it as much as possible, if it's set in a litterary work, it should adhere to its conventions. You'd probably alienate part of the audience if you had female gunslingers in the American Old West as a regular occurrence. If you're doing your own setting, it should enable different interesting stories to be told, and anything goes.

And, if you are playing in the Old West, gunslingers should be men...
Oh, wait. Deadlands is set in an Old West, but they take some small steps to make it so that characters of any gender are appropriate in pretty much any relevant role in the setting.

Like I said, anything goes since they are not trying to emulate anything existing. They introduced magic-wielding indian spirits, female gunslingers and undead. What's the problem? It's obviously nothing like the real Old West. I wouldn't choose Deadland as a system if I were trying to play in the American Old West, though, but I'd use it to play in the Weird West with glee.

So, again - why did the author choose the setting in this manner? If you are in a fantasy, that the setting is not the same as the real world is a given? Well, then why cherry pick that element to remain the same?

The setting can be whatever the author wants, as long as it's logical (lack of logic diminishes my interest in the adventures told). If in Deadland there is a total gender equality, the iconic saloon barmaid that gets kidnapped and tied to a train by the bad guy probably shouldn't be a common feature because the premise wouldn't fit the setting.

Interestingly, most of the Arthurian cycle has nothing to do with the Middle Ages - what we use is a much later romantic adaptation. The people of the 18th and 19th centuries certainly put their own spin on things.

Indeed. That's why I wrote "what they imagine about the Middle Ages".

So, when we pick it up.. why do we not put our spin on things? Why must we stick with the established narrative, when they did not?

If I was offered a chance to play in a game "set in the Arthurian Cycle", I don't expect to see female knights. When I play a game of CoC, I expect the world and society to behave like a Lovecraft novel. If I am playing Dogs in the Vineyard, I expect the shepherds of the King of Life to be objectively right and the sinners to cause demons to appear, even if that's tremendously anti-inclusive. If I play in Faerun or Eberron, I expect gender equality since it was also a part of the setting.
 

Gradine

🏳️‍⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
The setting should enable interesting stories to be told. If your setting is set in the real-world, it should adhere to it as much as possible, if it's set in a litterary work, it should adhere to its conventions. You'd probably alienate part of the audience if you had female gunslingers in the American Old West as a regular occurrence. If you're doing your own setting, it should enable different interesting stories to be told, and anything goes.

Yes, because as we all know, female gunslingers were complete myths.

The trouble with demands for historical "accuracy" is that what is being demanded is very rarely accurate.

"Of course there are exceptions-"
Sure there are always exceptions! And what are player characters (and, for that part, many of the most important NPCs they encounter) if not exceptional?

If I was offered a chance to play in a game "set in the Arthurian Cycle", I don't expect to see female knights. When I play a game of CoC, I expect the world and society to behave like a Lovecraft novel.

If your CoC game must behave exactly like the worlds of Lovecraft's writings, would you then disallow one of your players from playing a black investigator? And how would you portray black NPCs? Would it be with anything even remotely approaching basic humanity and respect?

Would all that be too much for your sense of verisimilitude? Or do you recognize that perhaps not all conventions deserve to survive?

I'll also note that extremely male domination is not the only way people approach Arthurian legend.

Edit: Added a comment; also reorganized thoughts to be a bit more cohesive
 
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ad_hoc

(she/her)
When I play a game of CoC, I expect the world and society to behave like a Lovecraft novel.

Lovecraft was highly xenophobic (though he did soften as he got older) and his stories reflected that.

He feared/hated all that wasn't white, male, straight, etc. This included culture as well; basically everyone who wasn't like him even including his Jewish wife.

As his horror was centered on this fear of the other I think his real life perspectives made it all the more real and horrifying (I am a fan of his work).

I would never want to play a game actually set in that world and while I haven't actually played it, I highly doubt the CoC RPG is designed to perfectly emulate it as you would.
 

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Lovecraft was highly xenophobic (though he did soften as he got older) and his stories reflected that.

He feared/hated all that wasn't white, male, straight, etc. This included culture as well; basically everyone who wasn't like him even including his Jewish wife.

As his horror was centered on this fear of the other I think his real life perspectives made it all the more real and horrifying (I am a fan of his work).

I would never want to play a game actually set in that world and while I haven't actually played it, I highly doubt the CoC RPG is designed to perfectly emulate it as you would.
The RPG itself doesn’t specifically emulate that aspect of his work. Though, I do remember reading through an adventure path for it and noticing some pretty tasteless depictions of nonwhite characters, including some very minstrel-y art. That was one of the earliest adventure paths for the system though, I suspect newer material is not so racist.
 

The trouble with demands for historical "accuracy" is that what is being demanded is very rarely accurate.

"Of course there are exceptions-"
Sure there are always exceptions! And what are player characters (and, for that part, many of the most important NPCs they encounter) if not exceptional? If your CoC game must behave exactly like the worlds of Lovecraft's writings, would you then disallow one of your players from playing a black investigator? And how would you portray black NPCs? Would it be with anything even remotely approaching basic humanity and respect?

As I wrote above in the thread, PCs are mostly extraordinary characters so most convention wouldn't apply to them. There is a difference between "impossible" and "common enough that nobody in the setting would notice". I would'nt disallow a Black investigator but I wouldn't be shy of having him contend with people prejudiced against him. There were racist people in the US in the 20's,. If I play in Nazi Germany, I expect to meet Nazis to oppose to, why would anyone playing America in the 20s expect not to meet Americans from the 20s? The series Timeless had a time-travelling team including a Black scientist. Having them deal with the different prejudices was a part of some of the episodes, and it enabled some interesting stories to be told. If they had depicted 19th century Alabama as a color-blind territory, it would have been odd and less interesting.

How would you deal with it? If you were playing in America in the 50s, would you remove all mention of the Civil Right movement or McCarthyism?

The same goes with non-historical settings: if an element of the setting is that Elves and Dwarves have been harboring a grudge for millenia and they are at each other's throat, I expect my Dwarf to be treated badly by most Elves, even if it's just racism.
 
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Gradine

🏳️‍⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
As I wrote above in the thread, PCs are mostly extraordinary characters so most convention wouldn't apply to them. There is a difference between "impossible" and "common enough that nobody in the setting would notice". I would'nt disallow a Black investigator but I wouldn't be shy of having him contend with people prejudiced against him. There were racist people in the US in the 20's,. If I play in Nazi Germany, I expect to meet Nazis to oppose to, why would anyone playing America in the 20s expect not to meet Americans from the 20s? The series Timeless had a time-travelling team including a Black scientist. Having them deal with the different prejudices was a part of some of the episodes, and it enabled some interesting stories to be told. If they had depicted 19th century Alabama as a color-blind territory, it would have been odd and less interesting.

The same goes with non-historical settings: if an element of the setting is that Elves and Dwarves have been harboring a grudge for millenia and they are at each other's throat, I expect my Dwarf to be treated badly by most Elves, even if it's just racism.

See, this is all not only more reasonable but also very different from the post that I quoted, where the presence of a female gunslinger, a thing that was not that uncommon, was enough to "alienate" a good chunk of the audience.

Out of curiosity, let's say your black investigator is being played a black player, and they ask if you can tone down the racism because, in their words, they get enough of that in real life (or, alternatively, a female player playing a female investigator asking to tone down the 1920's misogyny). How do you react?
 

See, this is all not only more reasonable but also very different from the post that I quoted, where the presence of a female gunslinger, a thing that was not that uncommon, was enough to "alienate" a good chunk of the audience.

You misunderstood my point, then. Umbran asked me upthread about female gunslinger, implying there were none in historical settings, so I rolled with it and meant that if in history there was no female gunslinger, then having an adventure pretending to be set in the old west where female gunslingers are "regular occurrences" (as in "as prevalent as male one") could put off a part of the audience.

I didn't vary my position but perhaps we failed to understand each other.

Out of curiosity, let's say your black investigator is being played a black player, and they ask if you can tone down the racism because, in their words, they get enough of that in real life (or, alternatively, a female player playing a female investigator asking to tone down the 1920's misogyny). How do you react?

If we're playing together, we'd have discussed the themes of the campaign world beforehand. A RPG session is a "common shared story" in my opinion, not the monopoly of the GM, and if someone around the table isn't comfortable with some part of the setting, it's best discussed beforehand to avoid anyone having a bad time. In this context, a black player telling me it's too much racism would mean I would have been emphasizing too much this part of the setting. You can have racism in the background in a setting without it being TOO prominent: it doesn't have to be part of every story. But suppressed totally... it would feel strange in the context of the 20s to meet only open-minded people.
 

Undrave

Legend
As much as it is fun to think about her fighting hordes of English soldiers, Joan of Arc didn't actually wield weapons. She led armies while holding a battle banner.

Oh, so she was a LazyLord?

Interestingly, most of the Arthurian cycle has nothing to do with the Middle Ages - what we use is a much later romantic adaptation. The people of the 18th and 19th centuries certainly put their own spin on things.

So, when we pick it up.. why do we not put our spin on things? Why must we stick with the established narrative, when they did not?

Whenever someone mentions King Arthur I feel a compulsion to mention the French series Kaamelott, which has not only added their entire six season run on their Youtube channel, but also have most of it with English subtitles available (though their ability to convey humour at times is debatable). Still, highly recommended.
 

Yes, because as we all know, female gunslingers were complete myths.

The trouble with demands for historical "accuracy" is that what is being demanded is very rarely accurate.

"Of course there are exceptions-"
Sure there are always exceptions! And what are player characters (and, for that part, many of the most important NPCs they encounter) if not exceptional?



If your CoC game must behave exactly like the worlds of Lovecraft's writings, would you then disallow one of your players from playing a black investigator? And how would you portray black NPCs? Would it be with anything even remotely approaching basic humanity and respect?

Would all that be too much for your sense of verisimilitude? Or do you recognize that perhaps not all conventions deserve to survive?

I'll also note that extremely male domination is not the only way people approach Arthurian legend.

Edit: Added a comment; also reorganized thoughts to be a bit more cohesive
I totally enjoy playing male and female characters both on a frequent basis.

That said, yes. Female gunslingers were nearly a myth. The exception does not disprove the rule. It doesnt matter that they are rare though. That isnt really relevant to whether you should play them in the first place. Just play them because its fun. You dont need to make up justifications.

Its shameful to pretend extreme exceptions are a norm.
 
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