A Sense of Doubt blog post #2961 - DnD Under Fire in the Culture War
I decided to share this article because it's about Dungeons and Dragons, and I have been playing almost as long as the game has existed having started shortly after the first set of books were released in the box set.
At first, the author's bias only colored slightly the content as he began to discuss "The Great Awokening" and "woke capitalism" with links for each, the first of which argued that the shift in the Democratic Party by the "radical left" is greater than the shift in the Republican Party due to Trumpism as argued in Vox in 2019. The argument is very flawed in hindsight after election denialism and January 6th, 2021.
D&D edition differences
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| https://www.pcgamer.com/dungeons-and-dragons-has-walked-back-its-huge-ogl-mistake-but-the-damage-is-already-done/ |
https://medium.com/@cjfergus/dungeons-and-dragons-and-its-travails-cd87025202f
Dungeons and Dragons and its Travails
How Wizards of the Coast Have Tarnished One of Their Key Brands
Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game in which players take on the role of fantasy characters, knights, rogues, or wizards and play through an interactive story shaped by themselves and a “dungeon master” who narrates the story and referees the action. Played either table-top or online, the game became popular with nerds like me in the 1980s and remains popular today. It’s also had it’s share of controversies, including a moral panic in the 1980s and 90s that playing it would lead to everything from suicide to Satanism (mostly it actually led to not getting dates with girls).
The past few months have been difficult for the Dungeons and Dragons game as several weaknesses have been compounded to hurt the D&D brand. Can D&D survive as the cornerstone of fantasy tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs)?
Let’s be clear…D&D is still the 800-pound gorilla of TTRPGs. It’s been making money hand-over-fist, benefiting both from its easy-to-learn fifth edition (5e), and an explosion of new players during the covid19 pandemic. Any claims of the demise of D&D or its parent company Wizards of the Coast (WotC) would be mistaken. Nonetheless, goodwill has eroded among players over time. How did this happen? As the saying goes, slowly…then all at once. Here are three main issues facing D&D.
The Culture War.
Like many companies, WotC became embroiled in what journalist Matty Yglesias has called “The Great Awokening”. Beginning roughly in 2014, this marked a shift in left-leaning institutions toward identity-based politics, a focus on oppressor/victim narratives, and aggressive advocacy. This gave rise to the “woke capitalism” concept, wherein companies attempted to appease progressives while simultaneously making profits. Thus we could see companies like Apple or Nike ostensibly supporting progressive causes such as Black Lives Matter, while simultaneously working with an actual slave and genocide regime in the People’s Republic of China.
For D&D, this was perhaps exemplified by the “orcs are racist” debate. Indicative of our current neurotic obsession with identity and problematizing everything, progressives complained that evil monster races such as orcs (the bad guy in Lord of the Rings) were racist, reflecting racist stereotypes and promoting real life racism. This inevitably split the D&D community into acrimony between “traditionalists” who didn’t see evil orcs as problematic, and progressives who saw evil orcs as indicative of racism in real life. Most of the battling, naturally, occurred online. As with many companies, WotC appeared to cave to progressives. They signaled changes to evil monster races such as orcs and drow, released a progressive-friendly adventure with a wheel-chair accessible dungeon and multiple non-binary NPCs, and another adventure series written entirely by non-white authors, effectively a segregated book.
These were all likely missteps, if well-intentioned. Thus far, the companies that appear to do best in these culture wars are the companies that ignore them such as Trader Joe’s or push back as the New York Times (finally) recently did. Data suggests most people, including people of color, don’t find evil orcs to be offensive. Nor does evidence suggest playing the game is associated with real-life racism. In effect, WotC catered to a loud minority of activists, alienating others in the core base of players. Though well-intentioned, the wheelchair dungeon with characters using modern they/them pronouns can feel more like a college dormitory than a brutal fantasy realm. Further, creating opportunities for diverse writers in TTRPG is a valuable goal, but the wisdom of creating what is, in effect, a racially segregated adventure book is less clear.
Ideally, WotC would have found ways to help traditionalists and progressives compromise on elements of the game under concern. But this, they did not do. Traditionalists were alienated. But also, catering to aggressive demands mostly results in an increased frequency of aggressive demands. Few players were truly satisfied.
One D&D.
Development of the latest edition of D&D, One D&D, was announced in 2022. One D&D is currently in playtesting. It’s inevitable that fans will debate the merits of changes that are in progress. This inevitably produces stress as players wonder if the next iteration will be as fun as what they’re already playing. But the bigger concern here is the monetization aspect of One D&D.
WotC apparently believes that D&D is under-monetized and want players to incur more reoccurring costs such as happen with microtransactions in video games. It’s not actually clear how this would work in One D&D, but might involve D&D’s reoccurring cost subscription models, rather than people buying books when they wanted to. This caused some grumbling among players regarding cost gouging, or that material created by companies other than WotC might be excluded from official systems such as D&D’s online DnDBeyond system.
The sense that WotC is lifting every penny they can get out of players’ pockets appears to be creating a rift between players and the publishers. Which leads us to…
The Open Gaming License.
The original OGL was released in 2000, allowing 3rd party publishers to use the game mechanics from the D&D for their products. Effectively, this led to more D&D related content, even if it wasn’t controlled directly by WotC. Critically, this led to the Pathfinder game by Paizo, which would become a major competitor to D&D. The OGL was intended to be irrevocable and perpetual.
In December of 2022, WotC announced a new OGL that was far more restrictive. Particularly if this replaced the earlier OGL, this could influence a lot of 3rd party producers’ ability to make content. This went against a culture of openness that had evolved in the gaming community and cast WotC as greedy and selfish. Many fans immediately left WotC’s DnDBeyond online system in protest. WotC eventually backed down, though whether their new OGL will emerge again in some similar form remains to be seen.
Probably more than anything, the OGL has tarnished the D&D brand. But my suspicion is that tensions have been building up in the community for years now, and this was just the right pressure point to make it break.
What is D&D to Do?
I have a few recommendations for what WotC could do moving forward:
· First, stop listening to Twitter. Most of D&D’s culture wars came from online controversies which we now well know have a distorting effect. Capitulation and apologies only drive more controversies and shift goalposts. WotC probably thought that they were protecting their brand identity by signaling an allegiance to progressive values. Instead, I suspect in a few years’ time this will look identical to the 1990s moral panic over Satanic influences in D&D. All companies, including WotC, need to learn to eye-roll better over morally sanctimonious online outrages.
· Second, that said, the most constructive thing for WotC to do would be to find ways to help progressives and traditionalists compromise regarding future changes to the game. Some changes may indeed be necessary, whereas others may simply be virtue signaling, or even harmful down the line. Also, regarding minority communities, companies like WotC should learn how to get input from regular customers rather than the angriest activists online who often don’t really represent the communities they ostensibly speak for. Developing listening panels involving players on all sides of these controversies may help WotC understand their players better and help groups of players meet each other better in the middle.
· Third, finding ways to increase representation of authors in the D&D books is good, but actually segregating non-white authors into a book is likely to foster division and racial resentment rather than unity. The idea of authors designing adventures related to folklore from their nature cultures is a good one, but WotC missed a chance to speak toward unity via also including one or two white authors influenced by, say, Irish or Ukrainian (two historically marginalized white cultures) folklore. This adventure book could have specifically touched upon the unity of humanity, but by specifically excluding some ethnicities created a message of division instead. WotC should look for more ways to unite disparate players, rather than catering to woke trends.
· Fourth, related to the new edition of D&D, creating new editions are a cash cow for game makers as, in theory, everyone needs to run out and rebuy all their books. But sometimes it’s worth asking…do we really need a new edition? The current edition, the 5th, is popular, works well and is easy-to-learn. There’s probably some risk a non-trivial portion of players may simply abandon ship and stick with the old edition (this is basically what happened when D&D switched from the 3rd to 4th edition, and many players decided to stick with Pathfinder, which was based on the 3rd edition thanks to the OGL.) New editions seem to run about every 8–10 years…maybe we don’t need quite so fast a turnover time unless an edition is running poorly.
· Fifth, of course WotC exists to make money, not to be “buddies” with its customers. Yet, in trying to monetize the game, WotC may be overplaying a video game model that may not work well with a traditionally table-top game (albeit often also played online where monetization options are clearer). Unlike with video games though, players can literally take their current toys and go home, still playing the game without buying any further WotC products. This may be the flaw in WotC’s scheme. I’d tread with caution here.
· Sixth, WotC have got themselves in a real pickle with the OGL. On one hand, I understand that their generosity in 2000 has now created real competition in the gaming market. On the other, that cat is out of the bag now, and reversing course 20 years later (or appearing to), has been a public relations fiasco. The current edition of D&D has been wildly popular, even with the OGL. Sometimes if something isn’t broke, fixing it leads to bigger problems. They should probably abandon efforts to change the OGL altogether. So far, they’ve capitulated to player demands on this issue, but it’s worth keeping a wary eye on their future intentions.
Conclusions.
Some of the problems WotC have been facing are not unique to them. The culture war has, sadly, come for everyone. WotC was probably assured by a progressive gaming press that “the fans” were united in wanting progressive changes to the game (they weren’t.) Overreliance on Twitter as a gauge of public opinion is a mistake many companies have made. WotC might have deftly worked to find compromises in the player base but instead left the community split.
Both One D&D and the OGL controversies portrayed WotC as money hungry and bent on using D&D as a wedge against both players and 3rd party producers. D&D now faces a very real brand problem. And, unfortunately, players really do have a lot of options. They might shift to an alternate gaming system, “freeze” their play using the current edition content they already have and like (buying new stuff for every edition iteration is annoying anyway), or even revert to an earlier edition of the game.
I admit, for the moment, I probably won’t be moving on to One D&D. But perhaps WotC will find a way back to players’ good graces. We will have to see.
Christopher J. Ferguson
Psychology Professor by day. D&D hero by night. Author: Suicide Kings, Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong and How Madness Shaped History.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2303.28 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2825 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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