D&D 5E Spelljammer Errata

[Malmuria]

The claim was that the new hires were "supposedly diverse."

I want to respond but I'm unsure of what constitutes a conversation that we shouldn't be having on these boards per mod post. I'll just put it in a spoiler for now

Spoiler: clarification

My bad. I was trying to say that a) hiring a more diverse group of designers did not result in a more thoughtful product, either because they were not empowered, or the whole company was not careful with the text, or for some other reason and b) it's awkward to cite diverse hires and Radiant Citadel (both good things) in defense of wotc against criticism of a different product. It deflects against that criticism by appealing to the "good intentions" of the company.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

But NA "culture" is not monolithic (including as it does Mexico and Canada, as well as the USA). There are hundreds of cultures represented in the United States alone. Do you just pick the largest "cultures"? This ties back to my previous question in the post above...

I wouldn't go by representation (plus, in the country I am in, it is illegal to discriminate on a purported racial basis when hiring anyway). A professionnal trained into the specifics of identifying problematic languages and references doesn't need to come from a specific group to identify problems linked to that group. A handful of sensitivity readers would cover enough ground, especially since they have time to work with the products, a very different situation than yours, were you must deal with emergencies and can't take a few weeks for researching. What would fail would be to hire someone based on their ethnic background and assume that, because they are X, they will avoid problem when working on a product alluding to X (it's like "you're Chinese, you must know how to cook dim sum") and use diversity in the workplace as an excuse when goofing with a published products.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

"Evolved"? So it's fine to offend my faith, but don't get within 10 feet of being considered a bigot. Gotcha, thanks Wizards for being so sensitive.

Apparently, because Hadozee have a simian look, it was felt necessary to include a statement "they evolved from smaller mammals" and "evolved wing-like flaps". D&D is full of races that come into the fantasy milleniu fully formed and developed without having to have "evolved" from some lesser creature.

Why did they feel compelled to pull in a subject that has real-world contention? They removed the other bits, why couldn't they remove the portions calling back to evolution. Just because of my faith, am I supposed to just gloss over it and ignore it?

And this is NOT something I am joking around with.

Because the evolution statement offends me?

If WotC is going to be removing content because it offends individuals, then they can do the same for someone who is buying their product.

<EDIT> And the statement as is in the book, doesn't give a choice on the Hadozee origin. It is a statement of "this is the way it is", rather than allowing the DM/player choose how the Hadozee came to be.

So, the typical "shut up and go sit in the corner" because my beliefs aren't relevant?

We have seen evolution happen in nature. There have been documented cases of evolution happening in the real world. In America, a species of fly in the 1800s mutated to be able to spread to apples and became a new species. That's evolution. There's a species of mosquito that evolved in manmade underground tunnels and railways in London that can no longer breed with its closest living relative species. That's evolution. We've done an evolution experiment with E. Coli so long that it gained the ability to break down a chemical in their environment that scientists didn't think they could evolve to break down. That's evolution. We've domesticated animals so much that many of them are considered different species from the animals they came from and have definitely evolved.

Evolution is a fact. It is undeniable and we have seen it happen. We know how it works. A fact offending you is nowhere near the same as a piece of artwork and lore that combined into an unflattering image that echoes real-world racist propaganda.

And, even if evolution wasn't proven to exist . . . this is a fantasy game. If you don't believe in Wizards and have no problem with them existing in a D&D world then the same logic must apply to the fact you don't believe in evolution, right? So . . . if you're not offended by Wizards, which you don't believe in, why are you offended by evolution, which you don't believe in?

 

[Ixal]

I wouldn't go by representation (plus, in the country I am in, it is illegal to discriminate on a purported racial basis when hiring anyway). A professionnal trained into the specifics of identifying problematic languages and references doesn't need to come from a specific group to identify problems linked to that group. A handful of sensitivity readers would cover enough ground, especially since they have time to work with the products. What would fail would be to hire someone based on their ethnic background and assume that, because they are X, they will avoid problem when working on a product alluding to X (it's like "you're Chinese, you must know how to cook dim sum") and use diversity in the workplace as an excuse when goofing with a published products.

That won't work because of the more and more common cultural appropriation complains. The people complaining will not accept a sensitivity reader of the wrong culture, especially if something slips through which the reader thinks is ok but someone on twitter objects to.

 

[MNblockhead]

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.

Don't know. The only kerfuffle I can remember was over terrible translation quality. Part of this may be due to the international audience still being primarily western. Sounds like they are making a big push into Japan, so that will be interesting. I know other game companies have run into issues in China with certain books not allowing to be published there, which caused some issues with fulfillment. See for example Call of Cthulu: The Sassoon Files. Since CoC incorporates events, locations, and people from the real world, it gets a lot more tricky. But there are all manner of things that can trip you up with government censors.

Once you start selling internationally, it gets really tough. The changes you make to avoid offending one group may be the cause of offense in another. At some point you have to settle on certain principles and perhaps accept you won't be selling in certain markets. This will be more of an issue with D&D branded video games and movies, I think.

 

[MNblockhead]

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?

I don't have the answer. But I think that you would hire one person who would be in charge of this but they would manage the hiring of consultants and arrange focus groups. As successful as WotC is, however, they don't have the budget of large Fortune Global 200 companies. At the same time, I don't think they need to. I think one cost-effective way to help handle this is to work this into play tests in addition to having a senstivity reader review it. That should catch more egregious issues. If something slips through, at least they can show that they made a read effort to try and avoid it.

 

[MNblockhead]

The same Ray Winniger who presided over WotC's race-related controversies over the past couple of years involving black WotC freelancers? The guy who was Crawford and Perkins' boss during that time and who put those guys in charge of 5.5e, the D&D's most important project since the release of 5e? That Ray Winniger?

And the same guy who wants to keep his job and make the company profitable and protect the brand. It is not like HE should be doing the sensitivity reading. But he should have enough business sense to hire the staff/consultants and implement the policies and processes to help avoid these issues.

 

[MNblockhead]

Yet that is the point. The complains are not coming from foreign cultures (Bavarians in this case) but from the US market itself (Americans identifying as Bavarians).
And in this case no amount of Bavarian sensitivity readers would help. Instead WotC would need US sensitivity reader. And its kinda strange that you need sensitivity reader on your own market but are fine in foreign markets.
So in this case WotC would not need to hire Bavarians, but Americans to catch the issue about Bavaria.

Sure, a company is going to invest based on their markets. As they start to push into other markets and translate into other languages, it would behoove them to do some focus groups and hire a consultant knowledgeable about countries/regions they are marketing to.

 

[EpicureanDM]

And the same guy who wants to keep his job and make the company profitable and protect the brand. It is not like HE should be doing the sensitivity reading. But he should have enough business sense to hire the staff/consultants and implement the policies and processes to help avoid these issues.

And yet...

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

How do we know that, when WotC keeps producing stuff with the old names?