Of Dungeons and Wind

This is what being responsible looks like. Recently HBO Max has pulled Gone with the Wind from its library in order to place an informative message by a film studies expert and voice of color at the front of the film to help place the film in its historical context. Gone with the Wind is a wonderful and deeply problematic film. It was racist when the book was written, when it was filmed, and when it is depicted. Some of those choices were done because they are depicting a racist period, others were made because the filmmakers were victims of systemic racism, and others were the results of racist ideas that the filmmakers hadn't yet delt with in themselves. I am not a film critic nor an expert on racism but I am very excited to be having someone who can speak to both introduce this classic film and I hope other media follows suit. 

There was a recent discussion on the Page of one of my favorite games, Dungeon World, about how the game supports colonialists, racist, and ableist ideas. As should be readily apparent, of course it does. It's based on Dungeons and Dragons and is designed to give players a lighter, more fiction focused version of playing D&D which is a game full of those tropes. To have built DW without those tropes would made it a more accessible, socially conscious game but it would have also failed at the games core design goal.

Plenty of people believe that designing a game in 2010 with that kind of goal, that of emulating such a problematic game by including those problematic elements, is beyond the pale and should be apologized for. Wizards of the Coast, publishers of D&D have certainly been apologizing a lot recently, as though they were just made aware of the issues with their game which have been shown to them over and over since at least the early 90s when mods on the WotC site we're regularly closing threads about this very topic. Paizo, publisher of D&D's closest competitor, Pathfinder, has been working on this issue in its products from day one. That's not to say that Paizo is perfect or that there aren't still issues with the core system but they are trying, they are listening, and they are working to stay ahead rather than always reacting. 

The games we play say things about the world around us. I am not calling Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson racists nor saying that D&D needs to be changed to remove the problematic elements. What I am saying is that publishers need to start acknowledging the problematic elements in their designs, talk about it and allow others to talk about it in their spaces. Systemic racism is a part of us, we are all victims of ideas and systems that have perpetuated racist ideas across generations. 

The only cure is education. 

Part of that is educating yourself, doing the work. There is no excuse for anyone who didn't know that D&D had seriously problematic ideas at it's core. There is a broad variety of posts and articles and videos on the subject. If you weren't aware until now, you haven't been paying attention. But it is also important that creators and curators of media be responsible as well and I will very happy if this trend of examining our media and putting the problematic elements into context continues. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3188959001