Similarly we misunderstand the basic premises on which D&D was based. Maybe it's just fantasy roleplaying altogether. I keep seeing these threads on RPGnet and elsewhere. So I am going to take some time to think out loud here, because that is what I do. D&D has been with us for decades now. The premise on which its tropes are based is canonical in the sense that the ideas haven't ever been mutable. While I don't think it's a flaw, neither do I think it is a feature. It is simply the base on which we have built. Rarely does a week go by that I don't read people voicing the opinions that they want to strip things down, turn the ideas on their heads, or see the components in a new way. Each time I read these ideas I groan and wince. I have yet to see something that I think succeeds on more than the most basic of levels. Dwarves ride dogs, or Orcs are Mongol analogs. Elves are elves, or there are no elves. Monsters are just terribly misunderstood or something else equally not really very different at all.
Now in the course of this monologue I am going to present a lot of ideas as fact, or at least as very strongly my opinion. While I rarely think I'm wrong, and really who does, it seems that I very often am wrong. What I think isn't usually a static thing either. What I thought about the mechanics of roleplaying twenty years ago is far from what I believe now. Sometimes my opinions change on a daily basis, or hourly, or even moment to moment. What I am going to present here is both an opinion and a starting point for further conversation. Please feel free to deny me, praise me, or burn me in effigy later. What I am not saying is that I think that somehow we need to rethink D&D based on the more enlightened cultural of our time as compared to the time it was written, what I am saying is that we need to be aware of those significant differences. Because we are aware of them, we need to understand and use those assumptions if we are going to rethink anything.
Dungeons & Dragons, and really the idea of roleplaying as we understand it was written by a few American white guys in the 1970s. These were guys a lot like those same astronauts of the time. They were fairly well educated, but possibly culturally ignorant white middle-class guys. They based their ideas on their own perceptions of Fantasy Literature at the time. Most especially Tolkien, but also many others like Howard, Leiber, and generally other white guys who fit the profile. These ideas were not based in any kind of factual framework. They weren’t professional game designers at that time, and there weren’t really any best practices or other games for them to use as a template. America in that time was also terribly unenlightened in terms of cultural differences, racism and sexism were much more prevalent. To be terribly honest about it, from our perspective now it was an uglier time. Looking back from a more understanding and open, but not perfect, America in 2008 in some ways it doesn’t even seems possible. However it was possible, and in Lake Geneva Wisconsin, USA in the late 1960s and early 1970s it was perfectly acceptable.
So looking back, it hardly seems possible that the game was such a huge success. That it set the fires of a million imaginations, including mine. That it wasn’t seen as terribly racist from the word “go”. There were no Africans, no Asians, and generally no non-whites at all really. The monsters were slaughtered because they might be evil, and there shouldn’t be any attempt to determine why they are that way, it was just easier this way. Looking backward as someone who was actually there, I cringe at the thought that so much of this wasn’t even the faintest glimmer of a concern in my mind.
I remember the first time I saw someone portrayed in art with a decidedly African facial structure. I think I was in my twenties. Yes we have had multiple versions of Oriental Adventures, plus Al Qadim, and in recent years even things like Nyambe. However for more than twenty years most of those products were such an obscene mish-mash of cultural stereotypes and inaccuracies that they were painful to read. What’s more the people portrayed in these products were artistically portrayed as “white people”. Sometimes they had the right clothes on, sometimes not. Sometimes they had the right jewelry on, sometimes not. However almost without exception the facial characteristics and structures portrayed were classically Caucasian.
It could have been a subconscious thing that no one noticed. If he artist is white, the art director is white, and the brand manager is white. Well, the thought may have simply not crossed their minds. As more and more women came into the hobby the obvious male chauvinistic bias became less obnoxious over time. What a lot of people call the “cheesecake problem” has been an issue for years, and though it is getting better, it isn’t gone. Similarly I think the cultural bias in RPGs is going away. However we aren’t there yet.
So getting back to the main idea of turning D&D on its head calls to mind this problem. When we discuss putting these tropes in a new light we have to start with the most basic of assumptions about D&D. Are we still talking about killing things and taking their stuff? If we are then we need to take that in to consideration. What happened in the past that made marauding a socially acceptable way to make a living? If it isn’t socially acceptable, generally, then why is it tolerated at all? Did we spend a hundred years in a kind of “Warring States” period where marauding was a fact of life? Was there a monstrous horde that issued forth from the underworld that wreaked havoc across the kingdoms? Is your mission really to save people and the treasure just a side benefit?
Why are these monsters all Evil, with a capital E. I mean a lot of them aren’t even intelligent, or sapient as we understand the terms. So the idea of them having some kind of malice is not really logical, is it? If it is, or of there is a rationalization for that, what is it? All of these things need to be addressed and considered just as much as the cultural biases we are accepting.
One of the first games that had these kinds of strong rationales for the different tropes that springs to my mind was Earthdawn from FASA. There were reasons that people crawled through catacombs and explored dungeons, those reasons made sense in the context of the setting. So many other games don’t. They just assume too much, and that makes the entire setting seem more artificial and less real. Not that it isn’t just fantasy, but if it’s well constructed it is a better game, and better art in my opinion as well.
So if your Orcs are simply reacting to human incursions into their habitat, or they are the corrupted offspring of failed magical experiments that hate creatures more beautiful, then the setting as a whole benefits. If they are just evil idiots, that brings nothing to the game. If Elves are so in touch with nature, why are they living in cities? If magicians are so dangerous, why don’t people just chase them away, especially when the want to build a tower? All of these hundreds of little details are important to building a play experience that makes sense to your players and your audience, and being sensitive to the ideas that there are no reason these cultures need to think like us unless we give them reason too.
Now all of this is just scratching the very surface of these complex and very important issues. Many of these issues can come back around to the point about cultural awareness and groups being portrayed in RPGs. There have been thousands of cultures in Human history, and there are ample ideas for creating more realistic and believable non-human cultures in D&D, but no one does that, at least no one that I can call to mind off the top of my head. So when you are thinking about turning the idea of D&D on its head, remember to start at the beginning. Build a culture, and not just a collection of stereotypes.
By the way, Happy New Year, and see you soon.
