WotC WotC's Chris Perkins On D&D's Inclusivity Processes Going Forward

Over on D&D Beyond, WotC's Chris Perkins has written a blog entry about how the company's processes have been changed to improve the way the D&D studio deals with harmful content and inclusivity. This follows recent issues with racist content in Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, and involves working with external cultural consultants.

The studio’s new process mandates that every word, illustration, and map must be reviewed by multiple outside cultural consultants prior to publication.

Leveling Up Our Creative Process: Learnings From Spelljammer

In this blog post, I'll talk about how we in the D&D Studio are changing our review process following the problematic content that appeared in Spell...

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In this particualr case, Perkins says of the offending material "neither of which had been reviewed by cultural experts."

This is very interesting because it confirms the numerous rumours at the time that whilst a couple of books before Spelljammer had been looked at by cultural consultants, that process had been abandoned for Spelljammer in favour of hiring one of those consultants (a very well-qualified person, to be fair) to give a series of workshops to WotC staff on how to spot this kind of thing, because that was felt to be a lot quicker/cheaper than having the stuff actually reviewed by even one person.

And this response is pretty much in-line with what I was expecting from WotC after the Hadozee debacle. I'm honestly still surprised it happened at all, given that the Hadozee were a "risky choice" at the best of times given their history and uh, being monkey people but I guess that's what happens when you just rely on workshops being effective in a CYA kind of way and then your pants fall down anyway.

Definitely right direction, in a very corporate and kind of funny way.

 

[Incenjucar]

Sensitivity readers are not going to have a significant impact on price, if any at all. It's not that expensive a service, WotC doesn't pay employees all that much relative to the area, and the amount of potential benefit is quite big. A lot of folks from different backgrounds play D&D, and will be more comfortable with it when it's less likely to give them pause from something ill-considered. The more inclusive, the more chances you have for the next Critical Role to take off.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I agree. It should not have been discretionary. That proved to be a failure of process. and when a process fails (especially this publicly), you fix it.

GOOD.

Leaving things up to the Project Lead to decide was wrong. Doing this also for reprints of current products is really good and a sign of good-faith changes in the company (obviously, they're not going to go back and edit 1e-4e content sold on DM's Guild).

One line I am particularly happy to see is this one:

"If we discover that something we created is harmful or hurtful to fans, we correct it. Then we identify how it happened and how to do better in the future."

I am very much encouraged to see that they plan on doing some RCA (root cause analysis) here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think it's pretty clear that the Project Lead didn't catch this, because it wasn't their only job to catch things like this and they had a lot of different elements pulling on them, and they weren't particularly the target of the offensive material so it wasn't immediately obvious to them.

Maybe it should have been, but committing to hiring a team member to review these things for all projects is far better than trusting that the Project Lead is going to catch these things amidst all their other competing priorities.

For the two (three?) books previous to Spelljammer they did hire a team member (or rather an outside consultant, as still seems to be the case here) to review the material. Spelljammer was where they abandoned that procedure, and they just IMMEDIATELY stepped on that rake, they didn't even manage to get a book or two.

So this was a fairly serious mistake. They had a solution in place, abandoned it/didn't use it because they thought they were smart enough to avoid the problem, but were not.

This is a reasonable response though.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Anyone who does this kind of review or is involved is this a good plan? Are there any pitfalls in this one even if it’s good?

I have limited 2nd hand experience with sensitivity readers but all good to great... but i can't help but think of star trek voyager not any of those good examples when I hear this... mostly because I have little faith in wotc hiring the right people

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Imagine being a one person "company" that puts stuff on DMSGUILD! Even if I have a person or two read things, no chance I can do all this, no chance I realize all the things are blindspots for me. It kind of scares me, actually....

It is scary, but there is stuff you can do.

First off, just avoid anything relatively obviously risky, and like basic self-awareness should be helpful here. I think one of the issues a lot of nerds online (and I use nerds with love here) have is a feeling that, if they like something, it must inherently be fine, at worst it's a matter of finding the right excuse (you see this a ton with fans of problematic anime particularly), and if you can at least dispel that illusion, you're in a much better place. Don't give yourself excuses like "it's realistic", particularly, that's an incredible get-out that leads people into deeply murky waters*.

I feel like the "I like it so it must be fine!" probably applied re: Hadozee. Like, oh they're cheery and fun, so how could they possibly be bad right? Oh dear. Never assume because something is cheery/fun to you it's going to automatically be fine.

Second off, I kind of hate to say this, but most people who have problems in this regard tend to be serial offenders, that doesn't mean if you've never had a problem you never will, but unless you were only going out to a narrow, friendly audience, it's less likely. And if you listen when people say "Whoa that's problematic!" rather than dismissing people, well, you're probably going to find weakspots quickly (I'm not suggesting you wouldn't listen - but a lot of people refuse to - including some fairly serious professionals, particularly those who regard themselves as artistes really emphasizing that e).

Thirdly, as others have said, you can find people willing to do this stuff for cheap/free.

* = I think it's okay to use that within reason when writing fiction, so long you understand what you're doing, but D&D adventures designed for mass-sale and intended to be relatively unproblematic are very different to fiction, which can be challenging intentionally.

I have limited 2nd hand experience with sensitivity readers but all good to great... but i can't help but think of star trek voyager not any of those good examples when I hear this... mostly because I have little faith in wotc hiring the right people

Wait did VOY have sensitivity readers? Surely not? It has some of the most repeated racist and weird racial stereotyping (of humans, particularly but not limited to Chakotay). Paris straight-up racists Chakotay in like the second episode. I know because I watched it a couple of years ago and I was like "Paris what the hell did you just say?!". Also let's not even get started on Neelix and his underage girlfriend because goodamn that should have caused arrests and ransacking of computers (not of the actors, but whatever writer came up with all that) lol not just sensitivity stuff.

 

[Marandahir]

Especially when wasn't Chris Perkins the Project Lead in question that failed to recognize something that should have been looked at? It seems obvious to me that in hindsight he'd be able to help figure out where the process failed. Nothing against him and I think he genuinely means well, but this isn't the first time something he's worked on has had issues and if the common theme is "maybe I shouldn't be the one deciding if this could be offensive", the solution becomes pretty easy imo.

He's taking ownership. That's worth something, even if it was forced on him by PR or HR or the execs on high.

I'd personally say that there were issues with a number of products he's led on. But there've been insenstive issues with a number of projects he hasn't led, too. Genre fiction is TOUGH. You want to lean into the nostalgia of what you grew up on or what your creative heroes grew up on - like Flash Gordon serials or Indiana Jones. But those old works had a LOT of problems - not only because they are a product of their times, but because their creators weren't held accountable in the same way. And some genres of pulp fiction may be inherently exploitative (I'd say colonial fiction and crusader fiction are EXTREMELY difficult to do justice when the PC is a coloniser or crusader, for example). That doesn't mean you don't tell stories inspired by those old fictions and leaning into them. The 70s-80s psychedelic space sounds / glam rock is alive in Spelljams. That music sounds like I'm watching one of those old space operas. But it also sounds like I could be watching Thor: Love and Thunder, and that's a radically less racist project than Flash Gordon.

Sounds like the solution is an easy, if somewhat expensive, but it also sounds like from WotC's POV, it's a necessary expense now.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Wait did VOY have sensitivity readers? Surely not? It has some of the most repeated racist and weird racial stereotyping (of humans, particularly but not limited to Chakotay). Paris straight-up racists Chakotay in like the second episode. I know because I watched it a couple of years ago and I was like "Paris what the hell did you just say?!". Also let's not even get started on Neelix and his underage girlfriend because goodamn that should have caused arrests and ransacking of computers (not of the actors, but whatever writer came up with all that) lol not just sensitivity stuff.

they had 2 a general and an expert on native culture... the expert on native culture though was a fraud.... one that worked on other projects as aa sensitivity consultant

 

[Vaalingrade]

Imagine being a one person "company" that puts stuff on DMSGUILD! Even if I have a person or two read things, no chance I can do all this, no chance I realize all the things are blindspots for me. It kind of scares me, actually....

The secret is if you do make a mistake, you own up to it, don't try to play it off and then actually not do the same thing again.

Where people run afoul the issue is almost always in ignoring or outright mocking people who point out there's an issue. Also, try and actually understand what you did wrong instead of, as youtubers often do, look around confused like a toddler who just discovered the stove is hot and just start crying in hopes that will make things okay.

 

[Zaukrie]

It is scary, but there is stuff you can do.

First off, just avoid anything relatively obviously risky, and like basic self-awareness should be helpful here. I think one of the issues a lot of nerds online (and I use nerds with love here) have is a feeling that, if they like something, it must inherently be fine, at worst it's a matter of finding the right excuse (you see this a ton with fans of problematic anime particularly), and if you can at least dispel that illusion, you're in a much better place. Don't give yourself excuses like "it's realistic", particularly, that's an incredible get-out that leads people into deeply murky waters*.

I feel like the "I like it so it must be fine!" probably applied re: Hadozee. Like, oh they're cheery and fun, so how could they possibly be bad right? Oh dear. Never assume because something is cheery/fun to you it's going to automatically be fine.

Second off, I kind of hate to say this, but most people who have problems in this regard tend to be serial offenders, that doesn't mean if you've never had a problem you never will, but unless you were only going out to a narrow, friendly audience, it's less likely. And if you listen when people say "Whoa that's problematic!" rather than dismissing people, well, you're probably going to find weakspots quickly (I'm not suggesting you wouldn't listen - but a lot of people refuse to - including some fairly serious professionals, particularly those who regard themselves as artistes really emphasizing that e).

Thirdly, as others have said, you can find people willing to do this stuff for cheap/free.

* = I think it's okay to use that within reason when writing fiction, so long you understand what you're doing, but D&D adventures designed for mass-sale and intended to be relatively unproblematic are very different to fiction, which can be challenging intentionally.


Wait did VOY have sensitivity readers? Surely not? It has some of the most repeated racist and weird racial stereotyping (of humans, particularly but not limited to Chakotay). Paris straight-up racists Chakotay in like the second episode. I know because I watched it a couple of years ago and I was like "Paris what the hell did you just say?!". Also let's not even get started on Neelix and his underage girlfriend because goodamn that should have caused arrests and ransacking of computers (not of the actors, but whatever writer came up with all that) lol not just sensitivity stuff.

When I write something for sale, I pull a lot of fluff out of the monster entries, and that has stopped a few issues, IMO.

I'm writing up a blog post on nothics, and figuring out how to say insane w/o offending someone is interesting (at least in my head).....though I think I'm safe in this case.

I avoid topics like slavery and a few other things that I know are triggers in what I sell, mostly. My neogi product makes it quite clear that's what they are, and that if you don't like that topic, you shouldn't buy the product.....but even that gave me anxiety.