I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
There is the racist presumption that PCs are white by default, but even if you have a dark skinned PC the benefit from something like that is still there because iirc it's the oils in the face that reflect light and not the color of the skin.
Sure, my point was mostly about the text's "white default" assumption being...well...not great. It clearly has that assumption. If the text was about oils and shine and not about your "pallid white face," it wouldn't be that little bit racist that it is.
And lets be clear, that's not cause to burn TCTHB and its authors as unrepentant racist swill, it's just noting that the presumption existed, and wasn't great, and we can do better going forward. It's important not to be precious and fragile about these things - perfection isn't the goal, it's just to keep being better than we were before. It's enough to say that we could use more representation of minorities in D&D without saying that there's some precise percentage formula that must be followed. The only goal is to be better today than we were yesterday. Every time that's true, it's meeting the goal. There's never a point where you've done "enough" and can call it "finished," it's a continual process of self-reflection as creators, as D&D players, and for WotC, as the stewards of the game. The work of being decent to other human beings can never really be said to be over.
Heck, there's reason to suspect it the assumption wouldn't hold up in 2e very well, anyway - "most gnomes have dark tan or brown skin and white hair," so presumably a gnome rogue would be in the same boat as a human rogue who had similar skin tone! Though there's nothing in the book about dying your hair...
Last edited: