This last week has been an interesting one for the tabletop roleplaying game community. Wizards of the Coast, which is the parent company for Dungeons & Dragons (and a very well run company I might add), has decided to produce an update to the core rules which they believe stand the test of time and will only require minor updates every few years. For decades, this has not been the case. Every five years or so, a new edition would roll out with all new revamped rules that would irritate old school players who would feel like they get left behind, and it would irritate those who have tight budgets as replacing books is expensive. This new approach...to make a ruleset that is backwards compatible and makes a few tweaks here and there that you can either accept or discard depending on how you want to run your game...has started a lot of discussions. And many of these discussions could be rephrased as complete and total meltdowns online. It's a fascinating thing to see how people enmasse react to a changing world, even if that world is fictional.
For one, a lot of the changes are being branded as "politically-inspired bullshit" or "wokeness gone too far." Wizards of the Coast has decided that it is in their best interest to be as inclusive as possible. So, they have made tweaks to races to make them pretty much equal to one another (which was not the case before). They have also created hybrid races that can more safely explore the fantasies of those people who identify as "furries" to allow them safe spaces and a means to create all kinds of animal and human combinations. Queerness of all kinds is represented. There are gay heroes and rulers of countries of fictional worlds. And there are black, brown, female, and disabled characters being represented. It pisses a lot of old school (particularly white male) people off. So why has this come to pass?
Look, Dungeons & Dragons has always been a weird form of entertainment. But its mainstream appeal in 2022 is pretty gigantic, and there are so many new people playing and wanting to play this game that I have enjoyed for decades. I like to think that the reason this has happened is because of the inclusive changes the game has made. But another reason might be that the escapism that D&D offers is a substitute for therapy which many cannot afford. Some of the old school complaints that I don't agree with which are aired online is the fact that Wizards of the Coast is supporting people creating and indulging all kinds of fantastical worlds, instead of adhering to the patriarchy-driven European middle-ages kinds of fantasy stereotypes that grew from works like The Lord of the Rings and continued through Game of Thrones and every other kind of medieval fantasy knockoff. In other words, in the eyes of many of these people you are not playing proper Dungeons & Dragons if your idea of a fantasy world looks more like Disney's Zootopia and less like Middle Earth.
This is a weird take, right? Additionally, the company has decided that the alignment system (which you may have heard of) is extinct. No longer are things "Chaotic Evil" or "Lawful Good." Instead, they want evil and good to be a matter of play and decision-making and motivation, rather than a label you just smack onto something. It is an interesting way to go about doing things, mostly because it assumes that people are smart enough to know when something is evil and something is good. We should all realize that this idea doesn't work, as the pandemic showed us that no one does "the right thing." We either assume to believe this truth, or far worse, to believe that people simply do not know what the "right thing is" to begin with. Labels like "Chaotic Evil" were useful to just stick onto things for those people (who are many) who have no ability to judge whether raping a thing is good behavior or not (if you are in doubt...it is not). And in my own personal experience, I plan to continue to label things for players who may have trouble sussing out whether a thing they decide to do is evil or not, and whether observing something occurring is evil or not. Sometimes, people truly are stupid enough that leading them around a bit is the best way to go. Although a good storyteller can accomplish this without making it too obvious (and that is the key, isn't it?)
There are also minor rules changes that are coming up. Some of the things that people previously used will lose relevance as the new things get printed, but I think it is all in good spirit as the streamlining clears up misunderstandings. What I don't get is the hate that I see from old-school players, who didn't embrace the latest edition of the game anyway, and are continuing to struggle to find players for their games that they run where the rules system hasn't been updated since the 1980's.
From reading their Facebook posts in a Facebook group I belong to, you would think that the company is a complete sellout to liberals, and that the new generation of players are all weaklings who got participation trophies in school and who cannot handle the harshness of a gritty game. They are half right...no one has the stomach to play games where characters experience nothing but misery and then die. What's the point of that? What's the fun in that? But there are (in this old school crowd) plenty of people who get enjoyment from watching characters suffer.
It's an odd phenomenon, and I wonder why this is. Is it inherent within human nature to want to watch others suffer, even if those suffering are fictional characters? Is this (perhaps) why dystopias are so popular in fiction? I suppose it is all good as long as you don't expect someone to inhabit the skin of that character that is suffering. And this (at its core) is what Dungeons & Dragons does: it puts you in the skin of a character. And considering that its a game, it is supposed to be fun to be that character for a few hours. And fun (the last time I checked) had nothing to do with suffering unless you are a really odd duck.
In any event, I wish I understood why people get so upset at changes. I wish I knew why people get stuck in tar pits like dinosaurs did in prehistoric times. They get stuck there, and then they die in the sweltering sun. It doesn't make sense, especially when I find out that many of these people so resistant to change say to my face that they are capitalist. Capitalism, by its very definition, embraces innovation and change. If they hate innovation so much, and they can't afford to replace books, and they hate it when a company makes something irrelevant, they should be a socialist. But they aren't, and that confuses me a lot in just about everything I observe them doing. Instead, they just want to keep going forward (and expect everyone else to go forward) with ideas that they embraced when they were young, like an insect frozen in amber. I suppose it is easy to confuse "what is" with "what ought to be" when "what is" has been working in your favor for so long.
If you have the time, you should watch the video above. It's quite interesting, and it will give you a bit more perspective on the changes that are happening in the community (and why some people might be outraged).
The slight changes so people have to buy new stuff sounds like college. Or the Madden franchise.
ReplyDeletePeople who don't want wokeness should go play that Star Frontiers game.
People are strange. You've got this contingent of white cishet males who feel like they're losing something, and they're raging against this. But they're not losing anything. They're just waking up to the world of others who want their fair share.
ReplyDeleteWe really need to stop paying attention to them when they act like this. That's why we're in this mess. We keep centering their feelings, rather than pushing them to the side and focusing on everyone else. It's time to make this group irrelevant.