D&D General Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to Be Racist

[BookTenTiger]

Based on the posted excerpts, the article seems to be saying that racism is used by folks with power to maintain power, and so folks in power try to promote a racist interpretation of popular media, such as the examples from Lord of the Rings.

I infer that D&D, now being a much more popular game than ever before, is being targeted by racists as yet another way to spread their hateful ideology and gather influence.

In my opinion, the best way to fight it is to do the opposite, and to continue to use D&D and other nerd culture media as ways to promote tolerance and community!

 

[Reynard]

I personally don't think any good comes from any discussion of such issues in RPGs that originates outside of the industry and fandom. We absolutely do have things we have to reckon with, but letting agitators of any persuasion frame the discussion based on non-gamer perspectives is just playing into nonsense intended to misrepresent the hobby.

Gamers are smart. We know that Howard was a racist and that pulls were based on all kinds of earlier works that relied on Victorian racism and colonialism as a foundation. We are fully equipped to discuss these things and develop theories around them. Some of us are PhDs and other intellectual professionals, even.

That isn't to say outsiders have nothing to offer, but they often come with an anti-gaming agenda. We should listen, but the real work can happen here, among us, especially by listening to our newest community members.

 

[Remathilis]

Based on the posted excerpts, the article seems to be saying that racism is used by folks with power to maintain power, and so folks in power try to promote a racist interpretation of popular media, such as the examples from Lord of the Rings.

I infer that D&D, now being a much more popular game than ever before, is being targeted by racists as yet another way to spread their hateful ideology and gather influence.

In my opinion, the best way to fight it is to do the opposite, and to continue to use D&D and other nerd culture media as ways to promote tolerance and community!

That is my takeaway too. A LOT of nerd culture is currently being used as the battlegrounds for culture wars. It started with video games in Gamergate and quickly spiraled into Sequel Hate in Star Wars (infecting a lot of other franchises along the way). The way you fight it is to break down the gates the gatekeepers try to use. They try to use the "reject modernity, embrace tradition" element of thing like old-school gaming as a wedge to divide the community. They don't care about OS, they care about the idea of using it to turn people against women, PoC, LGBT, and the handicapped who are in our community. They are frauds and charlatans, not real fans, and they exploit divides in the fandom to grift.

We don't need them in our community. We need to expel them with contempt.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

"Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to be Racist" by Adam Serwer from The Atlantic.

Some execerpts:

So, what was the explanation for why Elon Musk "needs DnD to be racist"? Those excerpts don't seem to have anything to do with the premise

I highly doubt that Elon Musk needs DnD to be anything whatsoever, I'm pretty sure he's doing just fine no matter what DnD does

 

[Maxperson]

To be fair, it is behind a paywall, which does make it rather hard to read.

Yep. I went to read it, but I don't do paywalls or account walls.

 

[Maxperson]

So, what was the explanation for why Elon Musk "needs DnD to be racist"? Those excerpts don't seem to have anything to do with the premise

I highly doubt that Elon Musk needs DnD to be anything whatsoever, I'm pretty sure he's doing just fine no matter what DnD does

I wondered the same thing, but since I couldn't read the article...

 

[Horwath]

"Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to be Racist" by Adam Serwer from The Atlantic.

Some execerpts:

when you link article from site that requires registration or even worse as in this case subscription, copy entire article or don't bother.

 

[Hussar]

That is my takeaway too. A LOT of nerd culture is currently being used as the battlegrounds for culture wars. It started with video games in Gamergate and quickly spiraled into Sequel Hate in Star Wars (infecting a lot of other franchises along the way). The way you fight it is to break down the gates the gatekeepers try to use. They try to use the "reject modernity, embrace tradition" element of thing like old-school gaming as a wedge to divide the community. They don't care about OS, they care about the idea of using it to turn people against women, PoC, LGBT, and the handicapped who are in our community. They are frauds and charlatans, not real fans, and they exploit divides in the fandom to grift.

We don't need them in our community. We need to expel them with contempt.

There is another element here as well. So much of the stuff that went on in the hobby for a very long time went very much unexamined. It was accepted without question by a lot of the fandom and dissenting voices that were trying to point out issues were largely ignored. That worm has turned now, so, there's been a LOT of examination of the past forty or fifty years all at once.

Which, I think, has made some fans feel very attacked. A lot of that seems to come from the idea that we're not allowed to criticise things we like. That if we point out some element of some beloved work is a bit... icky ... that must mean that the author is a horrible person and the work must be burned or otherwise censored. Which is, of course, not true, but, that doesn't stop that argument from being recycled over and over again.

And, then, as you say, there are those who are not interested in the hobby at all, but only in feeding the fire.

 

[Dire Bare]

Based on the posted excerpts, the article seems to be saying that racism is used by folks with power to maintain power, and so folks in power try to promote a racist interpretation of popular media, such as the examples from Lord of the Rings.

I infer that D&D, now being a much more popular game than ever before, is being targeted by racists as yet another way to spread their hateful ideology and gather influence.

In my opinion, the best way to fight it is to do the opposite, and to continue to use D&D and other nerd culture media as ways to promote tolerance and community!

Yeah, but . . .

A lot of this is coming from our current generation of oligarchs, who are pretty nerdy. I think their love of Tolkien and other fantasy/sci-fi is genuine, if prone to misinterpretation. There is a lot of ink written about how techbro oligarchs are using their favorite sci-fi stories to justify their actions and beliefs, but suffer severe misunderstandings of the stories themes.

Sometimes, we see what we want to see in art, regardless of the original intent of the authors. And we can use it to justify just about anything.

Ah, I've got more thoughts, but . . . I fear it would stray beyond the no-politics rule here at ENWorld. Ah, well.

 

[touc]

The Atlantic posted a "gift link" on its discussion board on another forum so you could read the article for free. That might have helped foster discussion rather than encouraging people to comment off something they can't or haven't read. It's not long, and it is political (and that may or may not end up closing this discussion), and for those who want a summary (or if the link is revoked), it's in the spoiler in direct order the article was written.

Spoiler

Note: the author discloses that he is Black, Jewish, and joined the "nerds" and fellow "freaks" (at the time) playing D&D (at a time he had to move around a lot) because it was at the time a game for outcasts like him.

• The world’s richest man lashed out "because his favorite role-playing game wasn’t as racist and sexist as it used to be" (Musk telling Hasbro to "burn in hell" when it acknowledged earlier iterations of the game relied on sexist and racist stereotypes)
• Modern D&D has reached "far beyond its original audience of midwestern misfits and bookish nerds....And for some fans, that’s a problem."
• D&D wouldn't exist without Tolkein's works. Tolkein German publisher in 1937 tried to determine whether Jewish persons were involved. Tolkein got outraged. However, his works embodied the idea there were universal traits associated with races. This would have appeal to the very political forces Tolkein rejected.
• The author shows real-life examples from some powerful right-wing conservative name such as Peter Thiel and the Vice President, all using terms from Lord of the Ringsto name their products and companies.
  • This continues with the American DHS posting a meme analogizing the armies of Mordor as immigrants and Americans as the Shire. Musk followed by posting on X that the British needed far-right protection from illegal immigrants, associating the far right as Gondor protecting the Shire.
  • The author points out Musk misinterprets the books as Gondorians are very flawed and corruptible.
• The author then suggests Tolkein was heavily influenced in his writings by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, except that in his version the Roman Empire wins and the orcs (who are portrayed as dark-skinned foreigners with slanted eyes, lacking culture) dying isn't a bad thing.
• The author posits D&D is not immune to such influences.
• When the author began playing D&D, races like halflings could become great thieves, but never a fighter.
  • Dwarves couldn't do magic, orcs were dumb, elves couldn't be ugly.
• Gygax was well documented about sexist and racists undertones, and alignment played into this. In a 2005 post (enworld!) he felt it was okay for LG characters to kill a helpless captive orc because “the old adage of nits making lice applies.”
• Much of this was game design. You needed a simple reason to kick down the door and kill whatever was behind it. The easiest approach was to universally say a particular race was bad, so it's just fine to kill them.
• He examines the surge in D&D popularity and notes that many are being introduced to D&D by watching it played by others. As such, those games are more about the story and improv acting, and less about random killing stuff.
• Historically, Gygax never saw women as playing the game (so much so that he put women on whoring tables and had tables for raping and pillaging). Modern Hasbro has been open to changing that, including using "species" instead of "race" to get away from the idea of linking D&D fantasy with real world racial stereotypes.
• He proposes that when D&D began these changes, there were two camps of resistance:
  • Those who found the new D&D to be bland, lame.
  • Those who found the new D&D to be too "woke" (defined as not as racist or sexist as it used to be).
• Playtesting revealed modern players wanted D&D to be more of a collaborative story rather than an adversarial hardcore version.
• He observes the beauty of D&D is that it can recognize its origins (D&D found a way to spread across the world), but it would be disrespectful of the game to cling to racist, sexist ideals (presumably referencing back to when the game was promoted to teenage boys instead of its current universal market). He also notes those who want a campaign where evil orcs kidnap all the women of a nation and they all need to be rescued can be done. It's your game. If you want to play orcs are evil and women run around in chain mail bikinis, there's nothing stopping you, and that's a beautiful part of the game.
• He quotes another as saying play the game the way you want. "[F]rankly, no one cares."
• The author points out that backlash to geeky popular enterprises is not unique to D&D, such as an all-female Ghostbusters or a black woman starring in a Star Wars series.
• "When the damsels who were supposed to be in distress and the members of the races that were supposed to be disposable began to be the protagonists, some fans experienced that as a kind of loss." Yet, it is guessed that "99%" of the geeks don't care or see it this way. But the 1% can be noisy.
• Now it ties to modern politics. Can't be avoided. Sadness over a change in your game is "infused with something more sinister, a Trumpian nostalgia for a time when America was more segregated, and the hierarchies of race and gender that once defined American culture were more secure. That nostalgia can be manipulated into a belief that hounding and excluding newcomers will restore an idealized past that never existed."
  • The author uses Musk's AI Grok as an example, that it is infused with racist and sexist ideals, tested by reporters.
  • He points to "fantasy racism" being the same as "scientific racism," using Musk's quote that no one died by US cuts to USAID (basically faceless folks, many from Africa, were like orcs in Musk's eyes).
• It ends with the author quoting a source that isn't worried Musk will affect D&D, including a suggestion he might buy it (referenced in the beginning as how much is Hasbro worth). Musk is welcome to waste his money on “trying to make everyone play the version of D&D that he thinks should exist in the world,” [the source] said. “That’s never been how that works. Everyone will play it how they want, or they’ll play something else.”