D&D 5E Should the next edition of D&D promote more equality?

[I'm A Banana]

Hah, true! It's one of the reasons I'm getting a paper copy of Ehdrigohr from a recent kickstarter. There's some very cool watercolor and pastel art by Anna Todaro. (And yes, It was commissioned.)

I love that. I can't XP you at the moment, but that is frickin' stellar.

Again, this is a philosophy that I don't personally subscribe to.

It's not a matter of philosophy, but one of practical effect. Someone sees Seelah and thinks she can be an awesome hero like her. Or, someone sees Seelah and thinks she can never look that beautiful. Paizo is responsible for those effects, inasmuch as they are content producers, situated in a particular historical, cultural, and socio-economic moment.

As there are no neutral options in this regard, can you tell me if the picture of a grizzly bear that I'm looking at right now promote equality, or inequality?

Depends on the context of the picture and its creator and the method of your looking. If it was taken for, say, National Geographic magazine, and you're viewing it online, maybe as a reference for your D&D game, you're reaping the benefits of the habits of wealthy European and American societies, which tend to be predominantly white. So, then, it is the produced for and consumed by a certain demographic, primarily.

Not that it advocates for any particular reaction, just that this is the context in which it might exist: amusing upper-to-middle-class well-educated (sub)urban white people with a glimpse of a relatively distant world they're not really a part of.

And by viewing that image on a computer, you're contributing to things like dangerous mining conditions in South America and Africa, and the illnesses developed by e-waste scavengers in areas of India or southeast Asia. Not that there's any intentionality to your action, just that this is a consequence of your behavior (and mine, too!).

Because we can't be removed from our contexts, either.

WotC can't, either. So it should recognize the context it sits in as it chooses art and develops a visual look. What that means about the art decisions it makes is beyond my pay grade, but if we can avoid...I dunno...what happened on the cover of the 4e PHB, I'd be pretty stoked.

 

[Alzrius]

It's not a matter of philosophy, but one of practical effect. Someone sees Seelah and thinks she can be an awesome hero like her. Or, someone sees Seelah and thinks she can never look that beautiful. Paizo is responsible for those effects, inasmuch as they are content producers, situated in a particular historical, cultural, and socio-economic moment.

It's not a matter of practical effect, it's a matter of whether or not the things we do are with or without without virtue, and in the latter case, does that make it at fault; this is, by definition, a matter of philosophy.

The question isn't if there's virtue in making it a point to include diversity. The question is if not taking such efforts is immoral ("bad") or amoral ("neither good nor bad").

Depends on the context of the picture and its creator and the method of your looking. If it was taken for, say, National Geographic magazine, and you're viewing it online, maybe as a reference for your D&D game, you're reaping the benefits of the habits of wealthy European and American societies, which tend to be predominantly white. So, then, it is the produced for and consumed by a certain demographic, primarily.

Not that it advocates for any particular reaction, just that this is the context in which it might exist: amusing upper-to-middle-class well-educated (sub)urban white people with a glimpse of a relatively distant world they're not really a part of.

And by viewing that image on a computer, you're contributing to things like dangerous mining conditions in South America and Africa, and the illnesses developed by e-waste scavengers in areas of India or southeast Asia. Not that there's any intentionality to your action, just that this is a consequence of your behavior (and mine, too!).

Because we can't be removed from our contexts, either.

The morality of an action is, according to the deontological philosophy that you don't seem to want to acknowledge, entirely removed from its context. As you didn't answer my previous question in regards to whether, in your opinion, something that lacks virtue is simply without either virtue or fault, or if it's therefore an immoral action, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by way of saying that everything has a context that somehow colors its morality.

Whether or not the product you buy contributes to poor working conditions in a foreign (or domestic) community in no way determines what sort of person you are, or what sort of action buying a computer is, from a moral standpoint. Buying a computer is an amoral action - that is, it doesn't violate any of the negative values or satisfy any of the positive duties. Now, if you do research to try and buy a computer from a company and retailer that go out of their way to minimize/eliminate harmful impact on poor communities as part of the manufacturing process, that's a virtue, but one attained by going above and beyond the call of duty.

We don't need to be removed from our contexts, in terms of trying to figure out what's right; context doesn't matter.

 

[Imaro]

I don't disagree; I've already said that I see this as being deontologically supererogatory - that is, it's a good thing if they do it. The flipside to this is that it's not a bad thing if they don't do it. I'm taking issue with the idea that WotC is acting in an immoral way if they don't engage in such a virtue (as opposed to it being neither good nor bad).

I disagree with your conclusion here. Since WotC must order artwork that is representative of the races in the game, and they set the parameters for said artwork... how can they take a neutral stance? They either place an art order that promotes equality or they do not... the only way they could be neutral is if they order no art that depicts the different player races and or NPC inhabitants of D&D world, which I doubt will be the case. Since I'm going on the assumption that they will not exercise the option to not order said artwork there can be no truly neutral action.

EDIT: In other words they either place an order that promotes equality or they place an order that promotes inequality... but barring exceptional and unlikely circumstances they cannot place an order that does not do one of the two above and thus they promote one or the other either way.

 

[Dausuul]

If WotC really want to ensure equal representation, then they need to impose quotas - and they need to have an editor checking everything they do to ensure those quotas are met. And even then they'll still face complaints, as some complain at the disappearance of cheesecake, some complain there's still sexism in the depiction of women (and, indeed, both at the same time - probably directed at the same images), some complaining that the proportion of black characters in a pseudo-medieval environment (or, at least, a fantasy world with superficial medieval trappings) is not realistic... and so it goes on.

Certainly they will face complaints. No corporation the size of Wizards, making a product as popular as Dungeons & Dragons, can escape complaints about their choices, no matter what they choose. So they will have to decide which complaints have merit, and which do not; which should be addressed, and which should not. Such is life.

And yes, ensuring diversity would probably require WotC to adopt an approach which could be described as quotas--a minimum number of black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, and so forth. I don't really see a problem with that. Just keep a tally when writing up the art orders, and if you notice that your tally has more white people than everything else put together, go back and tweak some of those art orders. It's a small amount of work which yields considerable benefit to those who care about such things; whereas those who don't care, don't care.

 

[Alzrius]

I disagree with your conclusion here. Since WotC must order artwork that is representative of the races in the game, and they set the parameters for said artwork... how can they take a neutral stance? They either place an art order that promotes equality or they do not... the only way they could be neutral is if they order no art that depicts the different player races and or NPC inhabitants of D&D world, which I doubt will be the case. Since I'm going on the assumption that they will not exercise the option to not order said artwork there can be no truly neutral action.

I think that you're misunderstanding my conclusion. The issue of "neutral" actions here are in response to the question of "Is this a morally virtuous or morally corrupt action that has been taken?" The answer here is that ordering artwork is an action that doesn't have a corrupt or virtuous aspect to it.

The question then becomes "is going out of their way to include socially-aware materials in their artwork virtuous?" The answer is a clear yes. However, if we flip the question around to be "if they don't go out of their way to include socially-aware materials in their artwork - whether deliberately or not - is that a moral failing?" then the issue becomes more complicated.

Most people so far have gotten hung up on the question of "how could failing to include such materials NOT be deliberate? Ergo, since it must be deliberate, it must be that they're actively trying not to be socially aware, and that's morally wrong."

That, I think, is the wrong way of looking at it; it puts emphasis on the (supposed) intent of the actions, rather than focusing on the actions themselves. Whether it's done deliberately or not has no bearing on the question of how moral an action is or is not.

I'm of the opinion that, as stated, including socially-aware materials in artwork is a good thing that goes above and beyond the call of duty; this means since it's beyond what moral duty demands of us, failing to do so, for whatever reason, is not in-and-of itself a bad thing, neither virtuous nor at fault. That makes it amoral, or "morally neutral."

 

[Umbran]

Whether it's done deliberately or not has no bearing on the question of how moral an action is or is not.

I don't think you'll find broad agreement on that.

By that logic, to stumble and accidentally cut someone with scissors you are holding is morally equivalent with deliberately stabbing them.

I doubt few here will buy that. The difference is strongly ingrained in our system (and thus concepts) of justice, which is strongly tied to our moral codes. First degree murder is not the same as manslaughter. Slander and libel require knowing and deliberate acts, and so on.

 

[Imaro]

. Whether it's done deliberately or not has no bearing on the question of how moral an action is or is not.

Yeah, I'm not buying that intent has no bearing on the question of how moral an action is or is not. The act of saying or using a word is not in and of itself moral or a bad thing... but the intent behind saying or using certain words makes their usage a bad thing.

In other words...Umbran pretty much sums it up for me. In fact in some cases I'd argue the intent is more important than the action itself.

 

[Weather Report]

Depends on the group, I ran a campaign with mature players, and two were homosexual men in real life, one played a homosexual male character, the other played a heterosexual female character, and there were homosexual (and Bi) NPCs, and ethnic diversity (people from Kara Tur, a Maztican slave girl, Captain Soot, etc, etc).

 

[I'm A Banana]

it's a matter of whether or not the things we do are with or without without virtue, and in the latter case, does that make it at fault; this is, by definition, a matter of philosophy.

That why I noted that it's not really about morality. Virtue and fault don't enter into it. I'm not talking in terms of right and wrong. I'm not referencing morality, or what kind of person anyone is. Value judgements of good and bad are far, far beyond the scope of what I'm referring to.

Systems of morality vary, the world's complex, and ENWorld really isn't the place to discuss whether someone is a good person or not. So I'm not really talking about right and wrong.

I'm referring to simple cause and effect.

Because WotC sticks a lady in a chainmail bikini on their product, it becomes part of some girl's narrative of her own negative body image. It also sells an extra, say, 50,000 books because 13 year old boys who wouldn't otherwise buy it, buy it. These are effects so well documented that they can both be assured to happen, with great confidence.

WotC must act under the knowledge of these effects, and must use the moral code of each decision-making employee there to determine for their own purposes whether or not these effects are good or bad. Which is only going to represent one local view of that (one view shaped by similar life experiences, given the economic, cultural, racial, and sexual homogeneity of those making the decision).

Rather than amoral, the choice is polymoral, and includes within it good and bad effects that vary with moral weight depending upon one's personal, subjective measure of morality. Which is why I can't really say if it's objectively good or bad (though I can make a judgement based on my local morality).

Which is what I mean by neutrality being impossible. Your choice will have consequences, and those consequences will likely be both bad and good, but you cannot abrogate yourself of the responsibility of considering both of those categories of consequences just because you cannot attain complete accuracy. Quite the opposite: you must consider them all the more, the greater potential for bad and good they have.

Should D&D5e promote more equality? Well, here's the cause and effect. Here's the things that will happen if they do, if they don't. Rather than not consider the effects of their actions, they need to consider their effects from multiple angles, to come to terms with how different moral codes and dominant cultural modes will judge them (hence, branding). No one can tell you if they are "right" or not for you and your values of right, but they can tell you if they are "right" or not for their own values of right, and therein lies how one harmonizes oneself with a greater cultural mode.

The question then becomes "is going out of their way to include socially-aware materials in their artwork virtuous?" The answer is a clear yes. However, if we flip the question around to be "if they don't go out of their way to include socially-aware materials in their artwork - whether deliberately or not - is that a moral failing?" then the issue becomes more complicated.

It only becomes more complicated if one's moral code doesn't include a requirement in it to be aware of your own social standing.

Any such moral code would have difficulty giving any moral guidance to anyone who is in a society, and thus the recipient of several layers of social complexity. So, kind of useless as a moral code, given its complete inability to accurately prescribe an action one should take in the circumstances that most people find themselves in.

It'd be like dance steps for a rattlesnake, defying the reality of the situation it's supposed to be used for.

 

[TanithT]

And yes, ensuring diversity would probably require WotC to adopt an approach which could be described as quotas--a minimum number of black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, and so forth. I don't really see a problem with that. Just keep a tally when writing up the art orders, and if you notice that your tally has more white people than everything else put together, go back and tweak some of those art orders. It's a small amount of work which yields considerable benefit to those who care about such things; whereas those who don't care, don't care.

Those who don't care are typically the ones who are already getting things 99% their way. Eg, characters of their skin color are always in the majority. Characters of their gender are shown as strong heroes almost all of the time, and characters of the gender they like to look at are sexed up to please their eye even if they realistically shouldn't be, and offered up as rewards for the strong heroes.

Of course those people don't care. The status quo works for them, and it feels just fine. They don't natively realize that it sucks to be you in this hobby when people of your skin color are damn hard to find in any depiction at all, and people of your gender are consistently portrayed as sexualized objects of gaze even when it makes no gorram sense for them to be tarted up in a come-hither hipshot pose that would look (and be) incredibly stupid and out of place on a male adventurer in the same situation.

There is a very good reason that the people who care do care. I think you would too, if the representations in your favorite hobby were skewed that deeply to not depict people of your skin color and to very largely depict people of your gender as targeted objects of sexual gaze even when there is no good reason for there to be any sexuality in the picture. Or any gratuitous skin showing. Eg, fighting a remorhaz on a glacier. Lingerie is not sane attire in this situation.