Roleplaying game designers, players, and communities took to social media to discuss these issues and press Wizards of the Coast, the company that publishes Dungeons and Dragons, to make changes. Graeme Barber wrote an excellent piece in February of 2019 on how D&D deals with “half-“ races (i.e., half-elves, half-orcs, etc.), replicates deeply racist ideas around miscegenation. James Mendez Hodes wrote a pair of must-read articles exposing the racist and colonialist underpinnings of Orcs. Several other members of the D&D gaming community-particularly people of color-have been doing the hard work of calling this out amidst a fan culture that can be deeply hostile to criticisms. I am far from alone in pointing this out. As I wrote in 2017 here on The Public Medievalist, the game has racism built into some of its core aspects. During the pandemic, D&D’s popularity has only grown as friends and family look for new ways to keep connected.īut D&D is also going through a long overdue reckoning. And professional D&D players-like the casts of popular Twitch show Critical Role or the podcast The Adventure Zone-have become celebrities. Whereas prior editions of the game had long been a mainstay in hardcore “nerd” cultures, the current 5 th edition of D&D (published in 2014) has found a much broader audience.
Find the rest of the series here.ĭungeons and Dragons is massively popular-probably the most popular fantasy rehash of the Middle Ages in the world today. This article is part 47 of The Public Medievalist’s series on Race, Racism and the Middle Ages, by Paul B.
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