Before I get started on this topic, I want to acknowledge a few things. First, it has been a long time since my last post. It will suffice to say that I have been spending my time on other endeavors. Second, many events, more important and impactful than this one, have transpired since my last post that would make fine topics. However, this topic inspired me to return to this project not because of its relative significance but because of how well a fit this platform seemed to be as a place to explore it. And, lastly, I want to be clear that in the world we live in racism is real and systemic, but that is not what this piece is about. This piece is about racism in the fantasy game of Dungeons and Dragons.
Not since Dark Dungeons has there been such a social controversy surrounding Dungeons and Dragons. The claim is that the rules of the game promote and encourage racism. There are a few things one should know about how the game is played to even understand that claim. Dungeons and Dragons is a roleplaying game. The players create characters that are the protagonists of a story. A dungeon master presents the story to the players. The story presents challenges to the characters, and the players, roleplaying their character, choose how to confront those challenges. The dungeon master, using the rules of the game, adjudicates the results of the players approach to the challenges and the story continues.
The claim of racism lies within the rules of character creation. It is also important to understand that the first rule of Dungeons and Dragons is that all rules are optional. Each table is free, even encouraged, to adopt and adapt the rules to be whatever works for them. In my opinion, that is really the thing that makes tabletop roleplaying games special. Because there is no software, or even a board, players are not constrained by the rules. The rules simply provide a framework for the cooperative storytelling and problem-solving elements of the game. However, most tables use most of the standard rules. That is why they are playing Dungeons and Dragons; to use the rules. Therefore, it is still fair to be critical of those rules. And, the claim is against those rules, so that is what we will be exploring.
The next thing to understand are the components of which a character is comprised. I really am trying to keep this concise, so I am only going to be explaining the components that I think are relevant to the topic. Each character has ability scores that quantify the natural prowess of a character’s physical and mental capabilities. These are things like strength and intelligence, and there are many methods for determining the base values. Each character has a class. The character’s class is the job for which they are trained. There is always room for creativity, but generally speaking certain abilities are more important to certain classes. For example, a fighter benefits from greater strength while a wizard benefits from greater intelligence. Each character has an alignment that describes the character’s general moral and personal attitudes on the scales of good and evil and lawful and chaotic with neutrality in the center. And then each character has a race. A character’s race, in addition to determining what the character generally looks like, comes with adjustments to ability scores and a tendency to a certain alignment. That means that some races in Dungeons and Dragons naturally have higher intelligence while others naturally have higher strength, and some races have a tendency towards lawfulness while others have a tendency towards evil. And there it is. Racism.
Race is perhaps not the most appropriate word for that concept in Dungeons and Dragons. Tolkien described the elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, etc. as the races of Middle-Earth. Dungeons and Dragons is heavily derivative of Tolkien’s work, and I think Gygax and Arneson simply kept that terminology. The word race has become quite triggering for us nowadays, but it does not have the same meaning in the game as it does in real life. As Wizards of the Coast attempted to clarify in more recent publications, species is a more appropriate term for what is being selected for one’s character. An elf has a fundamentally different physiology than a dwarf. To say that the average elf is more agile than the average dwarf is like saying that the average lion is stronger than the average coyote.
The alignment tendencies are based on the cultural background of each race within the setting of the story. We refer to that as the campaign setting, and there are several different settings published by Wizards of the Coast, many more published by third parties, and even more custom ones created by individual dungeon masters. World-building, while not a love of mine, is a big part of the game for a great many people. Each campaign setting has their own take on the racial cultural backgrounds that can change alignment tendencies in any way that makes sense for that world. However, there are certainly similarities with the depictions of races across the various campaign settings. These are originally derived from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. For example, dwarves live in an orderly, communal, lawful society and speak with a sort of Scottish accent while elves live in a care-free, chaotic society closely attuned with nature.
With the publication of the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons the Forgotten Realms campaign setting has become the official default campaign setting. This setting has a racial cultural background choice that has been a particular target of the claims of racism. I am referring to the drow elf. The drow elf is a sub-race of elves that have black skin and evil tendencies. While drow have been included in game lore since the first edition, it was the second edition of the game in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting that really developed the story of this race and made them popular.
There never was anything inherently evil in the biology of this race. Even in the very beginning of the lore drow elves had different factions. The evil faction made their lairs underground and worshipped an evil demon goddess of spiders. The good ones threw nighttime parties in forests under the stars and worshipped a goddess of song and dance. The evil ones just happened to be part of a popular story which caused them to receive much more attention.
Now I am going to say this as directly as possible: Drow elves are not black people. There are black people in Dungeons and Dragons. They are humans and share the same game statistics as any other human. The Second Edition Player’s Handbook published in 1989 states, “Although humans are treated as a single race in the AD&D game, they come in all the varieties we know on Earth.” In fact, the special ability of humans has always been their diversity. Where the other races have specific special powers and ability adjustments, a human character can improve the ability of their choice and select from a large list of learned feats. In earlier versions of the game this distinction was even more stark. Humans could be any class where other races had some limitations. Humans could even change their class during their adventuring career. For many gameplay reasons these race/class limitations have been removed. In the Fifth Edition any race/class combination is within the standard rules and viable for play. Humans, however, with their power of diversity, make a good choice for any class.
I can open the Monster Manual and find good and evil creatures of every shape, size, and color for my players to interact with. Evil dragons, and yes there are good dragons, are referred to as the chromatic dragons and they are literally classified by color. There are black, blue, green, red, and white chromatic dragons. The color of the dragon is associated with the theme of the dragon. For example, green dragons lair in forests and white dragons lair in snowy mountains. We see this sort of theming all the time in fantasy fiction. The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia is not white because Lewis was representing white people as villains. She is white because she is snow themed. The drow having black skin is another theme-based decision. Drow elves are subterranean; they live where it is dark.
The argument that the game itself is racist heavily cherry-picks certain elements and mischaracterizes their intent. There has been so much content generated over the years that sort of mischaracterization is not difficult, but it is certainly counter-productive. There is real racism in this world, and this energy would be better spent addressing those issues. Furthermore, the unwarranted bullying of a game company just gives ammunition to those who would downplay racism’s real impact on society.
While the mechanical framework is not inherently racist, there can be racism in Dungeons and Dragons. An important element of the game is the fictional storytelling. Fiction is influenced by real life. There is racism in real life and a fictional story can have it too. There are many ways a story can include racial intolerance and oppression, but simply having those elements is not the same as advocating for them. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. There are fictional stories adjacent to Dungeons and Dragons that promote tolerance and cooperation through their inclusion of racism as a theme.
Published long before the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons, The Lord of The Rings played a large role in influencing the game. My favorite character arcs in that story are those of Legolas and Gimli. The elves and dwarves they represented had a history of bad blood. When the fellowship began they did not like or trust each other. They put their differences aside and reluctantly joined the fellowship for the good of Middle-Earth. Throughout the story their relationship grew to mutual respect and eventually a strong friendship. By the end of the story, they planned to bring that goodwill back to their respective people and put an end to feuds that had lasted for generations.
Probably the most popular book series created from Dungeons and Dragons is Salvatore’s The Legend of Drizzt. There are so many of these books that I am currently a few behind. The protagonist, Drizzt, is a drow elf from a subterranean city of the evil demon spider worshipping drow. He is good and pure of heart and not corrupted by the evil influence of the society of which he was born. Instead, he escapes and travels to the surface world where he is considered a monster and experiences incredible prejudice from the surface-dwelling races. Over the course of his adventures other characters learn to look beyond his birthright and he makes some great friends. Eventually, he transforms the attitudes of a large portion of the region. They learn not to judge someone based on how they are born and instead on the quality of their character. I think it is ironic that the popularity of this series is partially to blame for the accusations of racism against the game when it is literally advocating for tolerance and inclusion.
I think I understand why the publishers, authors, and game designers do not attempt to defend themselves against these claims. Instead, they denounce their past and make unspecific apologies followed by non-committal promises about being better. That is because there really is not much else that they can do. Any attempt to argue will only increase awareness of the accusations and bolster the accusers.
Currently, it seems that they intend to make a few changes to address these concerns with the next release of the game. They plan to replace the word race with the word species. The next release will decouple the ability score adjustments from the species, but it leaves other, more obviously, biological abilities in place. Ironically, this further dilutes diversity being the special ability of the human species. These changes are fine I guess, but all they really do is remove the elements that triggered the accusers. I have also noticed an increased attempt to include more Earth cultural diversity in the characters from samples and pre-made content. This is a fine thing to do as well. If someone wants to include a character in their story that is like them in real life, it is good to know that is something that can be done. However, it changes nothing. Dungeons and Dragons has always been a game to be played and enjoyed by anyone. There is no meaningful change here, because there was never much merit to the accusations in the first place.
