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

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

I'm saying it's more about perception and how things are marketed. Perception is reality nit picking online doesn't really matter.

If they're marketing something based on diversity it's probably not very good. There's been a lot of flops over the last 5 years a d you can usually tell what's gonna happen based on the marketing or pre release interviews.

And there's fake BS horrible corporations like Disney who say one thing and do another or make very dodgy decisions on said movies eg Mulans filming locations and who they worked with.

Worst thing about Black Panther is some of the CGI and it's an MCU movie. One of the better ones but still MCU.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my experience, the majority of time that people complain about "forced inclusion", they're actually just bigots scrambling for a "reasonable" excuse for why they're so angry at the movie/show for including diversity.

Again, that seems a very negative view. I'm sorry your experiences have led you to that conclusion.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If they're marketing something based on diversity it's probably not very good.

I would like to see some examples of this, because I don't view "oh, and the cast is excited that this franchise is making room for people who look like them for the first time" as being the focus of marketing, but rather an acknowledgement of something in interviews.

And when a cast is doing dozens of media junkets a day, different outlets are going to try and highlight questions they got answered that they don't think anyone else did, so it -- like every other question -- will be the main focus of at least one interview as a result. That's not nefarious, that's just competition.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would like to see some examples of this, because I don't view "oh, and the cast is excited that this franchise is making room for people who look like them for the first time" as being the focus of marketing, but rather an acknowledgement of something in interviews.

And when a cast is doing dozens of media junkets a day, different outlets are going to try and highlight questions they got answered that they don't think anyone else did, so it -- like every other question -- will be the main focus of at least one interview as a result. That's not nefarious, that's just competition.

I don't think diversity and quality are correlated much at all. Quality is good, and diversity is good, but a diverse story isn't necessarily better than a non-diverse one.

 

[Smackpixi]

I’d just like to point out that it’s entirely possible that the actors chosen for Rings of Power were the one’s the that the creators felt best fit the part once they discarded the idea everyone had to be white.

The are reasons to cast people beyond “Tolkien said they ere white” “I‘ll get yelled at if the casting isn’t woke enough” Having a diverse cast is the right thing to do” and “A diverse cast gets me more eyeballs”.

Once you develop a diverse pool of candidates, it’s entirely possible to just select the actors who just seem to bring the most to the part.

 

[Zardnaar]

I would like to see some examples of this, because I don't view "oh, and the cast is excited that this franchise is making room for people who look like them for the first time" as being the focus of marketing, but rather an acknowledgement of something in interviews.

And when a cast is doing dozens of media junkets a day, different outlets are going to try and highlight questions they got answered that they don't think anyone else did, so it -- like every other question -- will be the main focus of at least one interview as a result. That's not nefarious, that's just competition.

Well it's not just that it's also what the directors and/or producer are saying.

So yeah you can often predict what's gonna flip or not on some of that. Or if you can't prove it's gonna flip eg a streaming show if it's gonna get acseain 2 or not things like that.

 

[Minigiant]

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.

I usually go with the "Jackie Robinson rule" to "Sturgeon's Law".

The "first to break a barrier" of note are more likely to be greats due to the hurdles to be first. The bad firsts rarely get a chance and either don't get to be first or are forgotten to hide the mistakes.

However by the time it becomes a trend and companies pounce on the new hotness: Sturgeon's Law.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I’d just like to point out that it’s entirely possible that the actors chosen for Rings of Power were the one’s the that the creators felt best fit the part once they discarded the idea everyone had to be white.

The are reasons to cast people beyond “Tolkien said they ere white” “I‘ll get yelled at if the casting isn’t woke enough” Having a diverse cast is the right thing to do” and “A diverse cast gets me more eyeballs”.

Once you develop a diverse pool of candidates, it’s entirely possible to just select the actors who just seem to bring the most to the part.

That's my take on RoP. At no point did I notice a reference to the black Harfoot being Black or the Black Elf being black in story. I assumed it was just the actor being black and the best for the role. It's not like actors have to look like their character -- Viggo Mortensen is 1m78, 25 cm less than Aragorn and nobody ever complained about casting a much shorter actor, despite size being as noticeable as skin color.

 

[Faolyn]

Side note: Anyone interested in what it would be like to have a Black man with the resources, methods and intensity of Batman should check out Marvel's 2016 Nighthawk six-issue series. (There are a bunch of versions of this character, so it's just this specific one.)

Being a Black man, even if he's still a billionaire with a fetish for working out and beating up bad guys, does change Batman quite a bit.

It's an extremely interesting read, although sadly, the character died soon after that series and was succeeded by two different Nighthawks, because comics.

I'll see if I can find that one.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

Race is a social construct. We've come to ascribe to a handful of phenotypes (skin color, hair color) an idea that these represent a taxonomy of differently evolved humans, but this is biologically not the case. Of course, as within any species, there is genetic differentiation, but these differences exist as much within a group of geographically close individuals as between individuals who are geographically distant (the pioneering research was done by evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin). In other words, there are all sorts of genetic differences between you and your neighbor, but the ones we focus on socially are visible phenotypically things like skin color.

One could try to think about the environment of middle earth or another fantasy setting, and think about how that might affect skin color, and many fantasy settings more or less replicate a european geography along these lines (westeros, faerun, etc). But it's a little weird to me to think about evolutionary science when it comes to skin color but handwave science when it comes to any number of other things in a fantasy setting (from how mountains form to the physics of magic).

It's especially pointless considering that there are actual different species in fantasy settings. I thought the Witcher TV show was interesting this regard. There is active and tangible conflict between elves and human societies, including racism and racial violence. So the show has white elves and black elves, but what you realize watching it is that skin color isn't the meaningful point of difference in that setting as it is for us in the real world. Rather, the meaningful point of difference is whether you are elf or not an elf.