D&D 5E Spelljammer Errata

[JEB]

Personally, I think WotC was burned by the people who were complaining about VGR's lore and went too far the other way.

A recurring complaint on D&D Reddit is that that D&D books have become increasingly lore light, leaving too much to DMs to fill in. VGR is among the products that have been complained about along those lines. Spelljammer going even lighter on lore is a continuation of that trend, not a rejection of it.

 

[bedir than]

Simultaneously praising Wotc for supposed diverse hires

I'm curious as to how their recent design/writing hires aren't diverse. They've been women, Southeast Asian, Southwest Asian.

 

[MNblockhead]

Either have a team with a higher amount of diversity or you need to bring in specialists like an SEI Editor.

Bring in specialists. You will never have a team as diverse as your audience. Big mistake I've seen made in many organizations. "Well, we hired someone who is XX", as if a XX person isn't going to unintentionally offend a YY person. And just because you are a member of a certain group doesn't mean you have the historical context, awareness of regional differences, or international experience to avoid content offensive to others in your group.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

I know they probably won't do this because of IP protection concerns, but if they playtested the lore they planned to use as well as mechanics, a lot of these issues could be avoided. Professional sensitivity readers will pick up on a lot of issues, but having the Twitter engaged playerbase look through the lore will pick up on even more red flags and offers a level of plausible deniability later: "100,000 people downloaded that UA pdf and no one had an issue with it" is a better defense than "we sent our staff to a one day cultural diversity course."

 

[Faolyn]

This is what Perkins chose to say to a games journalist for a story on representation in ToA. He is trying to express a different vision for what Chuult could be, but defaults to using loaded language to describe it. The fact that he didn't bother to hire a consultant to help is the cherry on top

That's a very good example of the insidiousness of bigotry. Most of D&Dlandia is "savage" and filled with monsters, and even the most "civilized" of Faerunean cities have pleny of monsters, evil cults, and other horrors, but for some reason, that doesn't count as savage or backwards. As for "warring tribes," I always remember a line from Good Omens, where it said something along the lines of "when the Scottish weren't warring with their eternal enemies, the Scottish" but again, that seemingly doesn't count as warring--or that being at war prevents a culture from thriving in other ways.

 

[MNblockhead]

again, I don't care if it is malice or incompetence... I think we MAY* need new younger blood in there


*I said may, and I mean it, I'm not sure if I would sign such a petition but as it is talked about I am leaning toward maybe, to most likely

In my experience, youth has little to do with it. Thinking that hiring a diverse group of young designers, product managers, and artists is going to make the issue going away is naive. There are many good reasons to bring in new, younger blood (new perspectives and ideas, better sense of what younger customers are into, etc.), but it won't replace the need to have professional sensitivity reviews.

 

[Ixal]

Maybe in the US gaming industry. But companies selling internationally have been stepping on cultural mines for decades and big brands certainly invest in avoiding costly mistakes that end up requiring reprints, scrapping and redoing marketing campaigns, issuing recalls, getting their content banned, etc. D&D is a big brand now with and increasingly diverse and global audience. After the issues they have already have, I don't know why they haven't learned their lesson, but I'm sure they are thinking about it now.

Except that D&D does not seem to run afoul any international issues as far as I am aware. All complains so far have come from their home market.

 

[Faolyn]

Which is why old settings should be retired entirely, so they can make new settings that fit in the box they're allowed to play in. Or, if lore is that meaningless, then just present the rules and make people tell their own stories entirely. That's the only way to avoid these issues completely and still make money.

People want to have new ideas for old favorite settings, because otherwise, those settings grow stale and boring. They don't just want new settings.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Except that D&D does not seem to run afoul any international issues as far as I am aware. All complains so far have come from their home market.

Well, in their latest investor communication, they mentionned that their market is 85% North American, it's logical that 85% of the complaints would come from there, isn't it? That, plus bad support for localization, means that cultures that would be offended by things present in settings will simply... not have access to the offensive material and probably wouldn't react the way NA customers would.

 

[Cruentus]

In my experience, youth has little to do with it. Thinking that hiring a diverse group of young designers, product managers, and artists is going to make the issue going away is naive. There are many good reasons to bring in new, younger blood (new perspectives and ideas, better sense of what younger customers are into, etc.), but it won't replace the need to have professional sensitivity reviews.

So I have a question then. If you are a company like WOTC, how many sensitivity readers are you hiring? How many cultures do you reference or ask for editing/reading for problematic rules/background writing?

If you only select 2 or 3, because, remember, people are calling for full time sensitivity readers (and I think its a great idea), how do you decide who gets representation? How do you know whether you might offend a non-represented culture in something you've written?

I honestly don't know the answer to this question, I'm genuinely curious. As someone who worked in emergency management in a large city, with dozens and dozens of cultures and languages represented (that we knew about), it became a real challenge to do things the right way across cultures in case of an emergency, and we tried. How does a game company approach this and not further offend someone else?