The tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons has long been a part of America’s culture war. During the early days of the Satanic Panic, it was claimed that D&D was a tool to lead people to Satanism. The playbook for demonizing games and media was also developed in this time, when it was claimed that James Egbert III’s suicide was caused by D&D. Egbert’s death led to an early acting role for Tom Hanks in Mazes & Monsters.  Lee Pulling’s suicide was also blamed on D&D, leading his mother to start a media campaign against the game. After the Satanic Panic ended, it was briefly all quiet on the D&D front. But in recent years the war has gotten hot.

As would be expected, D&D has been dragged into the “woke” and DEI culture war. Most of the attacks have been directed against changes made by the owners of D&D, Wizards of the Coast. The company has attempted to address some concerns about racism in the game, doing such things as revising some content. For example, some people expressed outrage at the idea that orcs and drow were not inherently evil in the official game lore. Some people have also claimed to be very angry about third party content, claiming that it is too “woke.” For example, when some players created wheelchair rules for the game, a few people expressed outrage at this “wokeness.” Most recently, Elon Musk helped manufacture outrage over the false claim that Gary Gygax, the co-creator of D&D, was being attacked and erased. A quick look at the 2024 Player’s Handbook exposes this lie. My goal here is not to refight these culture war battles but to, as a gamer and a philosophy professor, offer my fellow gamers a useful shield against efforts to manipulate them.

It must be noted that not all criticisms of D&D are part of the culture war; gamers can obviously disagree about rule and lore changes and do so in good faith. A good faith criticism of the game is one that is made honestly because the person sincerely believes there is a problem with the game. But good faith criticisms can obviously be in error or even evil. A person can be sincerely wrong or even sincerely evil. But we are most likely to encounter bad faith attacks e. These bad faith attacks can be divided into three types, although this list is not exhaustive.

The first form of bad faith attack is trolling. What defines a troll is their intent: they want to make people upset and angry. As always, one should not feed the trolls. Trolls can, intentionally or not, serve as allies or stooges for the other bad faith actors.

There are also people who are engaged in fighting the culture war and for them D&D is just a tiny battlefield in their  broader political game. Their goal is not to make D&D better; their aim is to gain political advantages for their side. One goal is to divide gamers against each other in the hopes of destroying any broad sense of community. This is part of the broader and ancient tactic of ruling by dividing: if the ruled and exploited are wasting their energy fighting each other in manufactured fights, they are not expending that energy to address real oppression and exploitation. This approach is also a method of onboarding people to radicalize them. For example, someone might be drawn in because they are mad about the artwork portraying orcs in the new Player’s Handbook and find themselves on a path that ends in white nationalism.

The third type of bad faith actor is the grifter. Like the political agents, they also aim to divide the community with manufactured conflicts. This is because such divisions lead to controversy, controversy generates attention, and attention generates money. Somewhat ironically, the grifters can also benefit their “opponents” by giving them content to, for example, criticize in their own YouTube videos.

The grifters also know that their approach is a good sorting method for other grifts; they are finding the vulnerabilities of their targets and can use these to, for example, lead people into broader political grifts and onboard them to radicalize them, thus enabling even more grifting. So, what can you do if you encounter what might be a bad faith actor on, for example, social media?

The easiest approach is to just ignore them. Even if they are acting in good faith, ignoring them almost certainly will not be a loss. If they are acting in bad faith and are good at being bad, they will break out fallacies (such as making a straw person of your response) and rhetoric to exploit any response you make to feed the controversy. As a practical matter, your time is probably better spent creating D&D stuff or playing the game instead of feeding the trolls, political agents, and grifters. But if you are unsure and do want to engage, I suggest the following approach.

You can try rational engagement and ask these questions: Is the person offering good reasons rather than engaging in fallacies and rhetoric? Are they willing to adjust their views in the face of good reasons? Are they willing to listen to what you are saying? Are they being reciprocal in terms of respect? If the answer to these questions is “no”, then the rational response is to not engage further. Do not feed the troll, do not help the recruiter, do not aid the grifter.

What if you have a friend who is being drawn into the culture war by trolls, political agents, or grifters? What can you do? This can be a tough situation, and groups have lost once good players to the culture war. Attempting to directly engage or criticize people about such views usually causes them to double down. In attempting to change their minds you will push them away and reinforce their views. This will serve to isolate them even more, making them better victims for the political agents and grifters.

A more effective tactic is to approach “at an angle” with kind, rather than critical, engagement. For example, if someone at your table seems to be getting mad about the new species rules but they love character customization, then present the new rules as allowing even more customization. Getting into a fight about whether it is “woke” to have flexible stats will be counterproductive. But there can be cases where it is best to cut them loose; the point of D&D is to have fun and if someone is making the game awful by turning the table into a culture war battlefield, everyone might be happier if they find a more suitable table.

In closing, I want to point out an obvious way to respond to efforts to escalate the culture war. When I run into people who are mad about some change to orcs or enraged about wheelchairs in the game, I politely point out what I call Rule Alpha and Rule Omega. Rule Alpha is that as a DM you are free to run your game as you wish and as a player you are free to play as you wish. This is because no one, including Wizards of the Coast can force you to do otherwise. But choices have consequences, and no one is required to play in your game or allow you at the table.  So, if something in the game makes you angry or you do not like it, then do not have it in your game. Rule Omega is that everyone else has the right to run their games and play as they wish; you do not have the right to force them to play your way. You have the right to express your views, but this can also have consequences.

I don’t think we have anything positive to gain from these manufactured culture war fights. As noted earlier, they just divide the gaming community, cause needless conflict, feed into the broader culture war and enable grifting. If you do not like something about the game but other people do, the rational approach is to not have it in your game and not get mad if other people have it in their games.