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

 

[Micah Sweet]

I had thought it was because it was JK Rowling self-insert character.

Has she said that? It certainly seems likely.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There is also another thing. Target Demographic.

A lot of people aren't necessarily overtly racist but not used to not being the main target demo. They are used to the products and services they consume and use being geared to them and them alone.

But when a company says "Hey, lets make money off someone else too", they freak because everything is no longer geared to them.

Yeah, I think this is the root of a lot of the "this is totally different than the product I used to like," because many folks are used to being the most sought-after audience and felt that was just the way of the world and not an economic choice.

Obviously, this goes for White, straight men, but it also applies to generations, too. When I was growing up, I constantly had to hear how Baby Boomer art, music, culture, etc. was the best culture, because Generation X is tiny and marketers were happy to tell people who grew up listening to Strawberry Alarm Clock and watching My Father the Car that everything they enjoyed was the pinnacle of artistic achievement.

My parents, who are pretty open-minded folks, nevertheless found it a shock when suddenly there were things on the radio and TV that weren't aimed at them and my dad in particular got pretty upset about it at times. (The idea of a giant Bob Dylan fan saying that Liz Phair can't sing was so funny that I wasn't even able to burst out laughing.)

And now the Millennials (the next enormous generation) have come along and their story as they grow up has become "for the first time in history, X, Y and Z are occurring," because marketers are happy to nod and tell them that yes, dear, no one else has ever cut back on drinking in their 30s or has had to figure out work/life balance or struggled to afford housing (Generation X is right there in the trenches with you, folks) or been told by older generations that they were slackers and losers (Time Magazine memorably had a cover story about how terrible Generation X was and how the world was doomed because of them).

And now they're already having their own generational freakout as marketers embrace Generation Z and a few forward-thinking ones are talking to Generation Alpha.

And a lot of what all four of these generations are interested in sounds insane to Baby Boomers who are wondering why no one is talking about Strawberry Alarm Clock any more.

Raging against younger generations having new interests and new beliefs and the as old as time phenomenon of younger generations telling their elders that they're full of crap and that Strawberry Alarm Clock and My Father the Car were terrible, actually, is a fool's errand.

Instead of trying to hold back the tide, older folks should try to listen and understand what's being said. Maybe some of what younger folks like and believe is nonsense (I dread the day that I have to see a movie based on Roblox and memes), but a lot of it is genuine progress. It's not a personal attack to be told that some of the things you believed decades ago were wrong. That's how learning and progress work.

But at least have the open mind that you wish your elders had when it was you who was shaking up the established system. You weren't always right back then, but you were definitely not always wrong, either.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Diversity is becoming short hand for badly written cardboard cutout characters. Writers who like pushing things usually mess it up.

So you have things like Sense 8, Shadow and Bone, Black Panther which are diverse and are really good stories etc. The race of the characters is essentially irrelevant they're telling a good story

Uh, race in Black Panther is one of the core points of the entire story.

Yes, there are bad "diverse" stories, Sturgeon's Law and all of that, but Black Panther does not exist without talking about diversity. That was the case when Stan Lee came up with him, and it's sure as heck the case in the MCU movies.

"Diversity = bad art" is nonsense and you should be suspicious of the people who pushed that message on you.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I had my issues with the 2003 Daredevil movie and Michael Clarke Duncan playing Kingpin wasn't one of them. I'm also not a huge Daredevil fan to begin with, so that level of attention to detail to the source material just doesn't matter to me.

For what it's worth, Stan Lee, who is responsible for many of the early Marvel casts being all-white (and who later introduced the Falcon, Black Panther and others as a belated corrective) was very happy with Duncan's portrayal.

Lee was a complicated guy, but he knew that he was approaching the world through his own set of blinders, as we all do, and worked all of his life to take off more and more blinders and be the kind of person he would look up to himself.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is a smart move to be inclusive (if buyers care about representation, it gives them more of it, if buyers care about inclusivity, it is a selling point...)

Contrary to the conservative meme of "get woke, go broke," there have been numerous studies that show that having a more diverse cast of characters and a more crew behind the scenes makes movies/television/comics/art more commercially successful on average than not.

And further, diversity in the workplace also correlates to higher profitability and worker productivity, thanks to different points of view and ideas being applied to the tasks at hand, and a better, more comfortable place for all employees to work.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Has she said that? It certainly seems likely.

I haven't followed her, but it how I thought that character when I first read it. And since you asked, I thought I might as well check, and yes, apparently she did say it is, partly.

Of the various influences, a younger version of Rowling — but not necessarily a carbon copy of her. "I did not set out to make Hermione like me, but she is . . . she is an exaggeration of how I was when I was younger," she said, also pointing out that some of Granger's vices she could also relate to (e.g. her grave insecurity, fear of failure, and smart-alecky ways).

Source.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There were people against Death in The Sandman being played by a Black actress--but I can't recall any negative comments about Despair being played by a blonde white actress, when she wasn't white in the comments. (Both actresses did an amazing job with their characters.)

Especially since, anyone who either read the comics or just saw the episode where Morpheus goes to Hell (or saw the cat-centric episode at the end of the season) knows that these characters aren't human and look like whatever those interacting with them think they look like. (In Sandman: Overture, Morpheus appears as a sentient sunflower at one point.)

It's completely canonical for Death to look like Kirby Howell-Baptiste, because even in the comics, she never looked like a 1980s goth musician -- that was just what the Vertigo readers saw her as. (Which was a pretty accurate and clever bit of design work, since yes, early 1990s Vertigo readers were by and large huge goths.)

It was a disingenuous complaint to begin with, even leaving aside that the same "that's not what they look like in the comics" standard wasn't applied to the blonde white actress.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Good example. IIRC, Hermione's hair is described, but her skin color is not mentioned in the books.

And JKR, who is certainly not above reproach, even made that point when people were upset about the black Hermione in the London staging of Cursed Child.

 

[Lord Twig]

There is too much to reply to individually, but I will start with an admission of where I was probably wrong. My assumption that they only had diverse casts because they were afraid to be called racist is probably incorrect. As others have pointed out, it is far more likely that they just truly want to include representation for all of the diverse people that will watch the series. And that is a good thing! So thank you to those that listened and pointed that out.

However, as still others have said, that doesn't excuse poor story writing. Having a diverse cast can be done well, or it can be forced, and when it is forced, it feels forced. It is not good storytelling.

To talk about where it is done well I have already given a couple examples, but those were a play and a comedy. Other places where it is done well are modern day and SciFi stories, but those are easy. As has been pointed out numerous times the real world is diverse, so not having a diverse cast would make even less sense. Likewise with SciFi, it is not real, but as it is usually our world in the future, there is no reason to think that things would get less diverse, so no explanation is needed.

Looking back at the original episode 4 of Star Wars, it really doesn't make sense that everyone is white. It actually bugs me when I go back and watch it now. As much as I like Wedge and Porkins, everytime I see the X-wings heading towards the Death Star now it pulls me out and I can't help but think of how ridiculous it is that they are all white guys. No women and no people of color. It is bad from both a diversity standpoint and a storytelling standpoint. Just double bad. The rest of the story is fine of course, but yeah, more diversity would have made a lot more sense.

Interestingly Black Panther/Wakanda was mentioned as being diverse, but is it really? Unless the new definition of "diverse" is now just "not white". Wakanda is entirely populated by black people. How is that diverse? Now from my own perspective this is not a problem at all. It is an insular nation in Africa. Why would they be anything other than black? Likewise Disney's live-action version of Mulan has probably the least diverse cast in modern history. Go look at the casting page. They are all Asian and as far as I can tell they are not just Asian, but almost exclusively Chinese. Again, for me this isn't a problem when you are representing ancient China, but it is not diverse!

There has been some recent criticism of Final Fantasy XVI being all white. Keep in mind that this is a game created by a Japanese company that has no Japanese people represented in it. But because it is an insular society based on medieval Europe where everyone is white it is "bad", but Wakanda, an insular society in Africa where everyone is black, is "good". That's a double standard isn't it?

I think a better argument would be that they just should have come up with a different story that didn't necessitate a society of all white people. Not to say that that kind of story should never again be told, but you can put that off for a bit after you have some more inclusive stories. And there is still some hope that there will be some people of color in the game, they just won't be from the starting society. So I will wait and see before I make a final judgment.

To get a little more back on the topic of D&D, I think overall D&D, and many other role-playing games, have done a great job with diversity and there is no logical problem with it. I mean, they don't say anywhere "Here is why there is diversity'. It just fits the default assumption that an entire world would not be filled exclusively with white people, and they aren't. So there is no problem. Our modern world is filled with diverse cities because of modern transportation. Likewise many D&D cities are diverse because of magical transportation. It just makes sense.

To get even more back on the topic of the original thread, I will just say that people need to stop comparing fantasy races to real people. Is it possible that someone is intentionally using a fictional race to be racist against real world people? Yes. But that is not the case here and in my opinion there is a danger to reading more into this than was intended. Sure, if you see some problematic similarities, go ahead and remove them, but it can be taken too far. For example, it is good to represent minorities in wealthy and powerful positions, but don't remove minorities from poor backgrounds entirely. If you want to include characters that people can see themselves in then you need to include characters that actually match those people and there are a lot of people of all races that come from poor backgrounds, not just white people. The poor kid from a minority neighborhood should be shown accomplishing great things, not just middle or upper class minorities. We should not exclude minorities from economically disadvantaged backgrounds entirely as that, in my opinion, would do more harm than good.

 

[Lord Twig]

So, the problem isn't that the individual's "priorities" are "bad". The problem is they are appealing to authority when the actual authority is disagreeing with them. This is the problem with every single "there shouldn't be black people in vaguely European settings" is that it is basing itself on historical accuracy despite being completely ahistorical. Actual black and brown people lived in actual medieval Europe. Simple as that. After a certain point, continuing to bang this drum despite it being constantly debunked is going to lead one to believe, justifiably if not always accurately, that there's something more going on, some ulterior motive to continue the lie.

Sure black and brown people lived in actual medieval Europe, but they were not common. I mean, at some point you have to admit that people evolved differently in different parts of the world, otherwise we would all look the same. So yes, some small minority of people moved from one society to another, but the vast majority of medieval Europe would be white.

For example, they added a black character to Frozen II. Was that necessary for the story? No. But it didn't hurt anything either. As you said, it was historically true for some few people of color to travel and settle in medieval Europe. I would even say that most of those people would be rather exceptional considering the danger of traveling at that time, so it makes sense that he would easily rise to become the captain of the guard. That's my own head cannon in any case.