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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 9358048" data-attributes="member: 6701124">Ongoing review part IV - Chapters 13-17:[work and illness delayed this one a bit, yay for long weekends!As usual, the chapters are generally chock full of references.Ch. 13 by Harris and Lulham is an interview/qualitative based look at the cross-over between D&D and performance. In particular it had how folks who were performers of different types felt their performance background influenced their D&D and vice-versa. That is totally not a group I am part of, but I enjoyed the read.  I can picture a big contentious thread on here about the concluding sentence "We, the players, are artists." (although I'd like the participants in the thread to have read the chapter first to see what direction it is coming from).Ch. 14 by Malouf-Grice focusses on the author's D&D experience participating with a group of "queer nerds". The writing style/organization of it wasn't my thing and if I weren't typing this review I'm not sure if I would have kept reading - for a while it alternates between what was observed and explaining the details of it in ways I wasn't expecting and wasn't sure was helpful. (For example, showing a group chat message with emoji's and then explaining the significance of the emoji's).  Maybe it's an academic writing style I'm not used to?  I could imagine the author's group's pain when a game of Werewolf (not the ttrpg) with another group they just met didn't go well -- but finding that they all ended up chatting on their phones at one point made it feel different. I wonder if the authors specifying "homosexual" groups instead of "queer" signifies something.The third set of vignettes was a mixed bag.  The first of this batch looked like it was heading somewhere and veered off.  The second's "The brain can't distinguish between what's real and what's vividly imagined" felt a little ironic given how the first started.Ch. 15 by Cote and Saidel was on "Race" in D&D Character Creation. I thought it was a solid chapter on the subject. As it focuses on character creation in particular, it doesn't have some of the appalling monster descriptions and creator quotes that would come up in a more broadly based discussion of race/racism in D&D. I probably would have given a bit of etymology/definitions/usage of "race", besides the way it is commonly used today, on either page 232 or 241.  I didn't recall that 2e explicitly said race in that edition meant fantasy species and not human "races" (which fits with one of the obsolete meanings). When calling out racial ability modifiers they note that halflings had physicial stat limitations but were also very small compared to humans - but I was disappointed that they didn't have more detail on the problematic issues related to ASIs occurring for mental stats. I think they overplay 4e's introducing more races in Player's Handbooks than other editions - it had three PHBs, how many species do we get if we give other editions more books too?  It felt odd having Tieflings on the list of positively called out 4e contributions, are they problematic in the way half-elves and half-orcs are?Ch. 16 by Justice (subtitled "Reflections on settler colonialism, indigeneity, and otherwise possibilities of [D&D]") is a memoir/reflection of a queer Cherokee gamer and professor.  I'm glad I read it and I hope I continue to think about it.  It has me wondering what a book full of nothing but memoirs from D&D players of various backgrounds could be.Ch. 17 by Trammell and Antero also focuses on race in D&D. If you want to briefly read that D&D is an irredeemable excrement-pile of racism that has possibly "colonized the hearts and minds of designers in games across all genres" (Trammell, pg. 278), then these two short (a bit under three pages each) memoirs try to give you that. Even if that was the message the editors were looking for, it feels like these "meanderings" (pg. 281) do a poor job of conveying it in a fashion that is supposed to be widely edifying or meaningfully referenced in the the future. (Maybe neither of those is supposed to be true of anthropological sketches. I can imagine someone whose first book was the 2e PHB, like for Antero, putting in the note mentioned above in Ch.15, and the quote from the PHB about the variety of humanity - and then saying in what ways that failed them. Since the focus of this chapter was ostensibly on mixed-race kids trying to find themselves in the game, maybe talk about half-elves more than in a foot-note, like noting 2e says their experience could range from acceptance to bigotry? Maybe put half-orcs in the footnote since they didn't show up in 2e, possibly to hint at issues they raise?).</blockquote>

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