Category: Gaming

In response to a video I did on D&D and racism, a viewer posted “yet another racist feeling guilt trying to project their racism onto others, but this one attempting to use logic and his “appeal to superiority” with his college knowledge…” I do not know whether this was sincere criticism or trolling, but the tactics are common enough to be worth addressing.

There is a lot going on in that single sentence, which is itself a rhetorical tactic analogous to throwing matches in a dry forest. Throwing matches is quick and easy; putting out the fires takes time and effort. But if they are not addressed, the “match thrower” can claim they have scored points. This creates a nasty dilemma: if you take time to respond to these matches, you are using way more time than the attacker, so even if you “win” you “win” little because they have invested so little in the attacks. If you do not respond, then they can claim victory. While this would also be an error on their part since a lack of response does not prove that a claim is correct, it could give them a rhetorical “victory.”

The references to using logic and “college knowledge” seem to be a tactic I have addressed before, which is the “argument against expertise.” It occurs when a person rejects a claim because it is made by an authority/expert and has the following form:

 

Premise 1: Authority/expert A makes claim C.

Conclusion: Claim C is false.

 

While experts can be wrong, to infer that an expert is wrong because they are an expert is absurd and an error in reasoning. This can be illustrated by a person concluding that there must be nothing wrong with their car solely because an expert mechanic said it had an engine issue. That would be bad reasoning.

The person is also using an ad hominem and a straw man attack. In the video I explicitly note that I am giving my credentials to establish credibility and note that I should not be believed simply because I am an expert in philosophy and gaming: my arguments stand or fall on their own merit. As such, the “appeal to superiority” is unfounded but provides an excellent example of combining a straw man with an ad hominem.  These are common bad faith tactics, and it is wise to know them for what they are. I now turn to the focus of this essay, which is the tactic of accusing critics of racism of being the real racists.

The easy part to address is the reference to guilt arising from being racist. Even someone is motivated by guilt, it is irrelevant to the truth of their claims and this is just another ad hominem attack. As far as projecting racism, this is just part of the claim that the critic of racism must be racist. While the accusation of racism can be seen as a rhetorical device, there does seem to be an implied argument behind it and some take the time to develop an argument for their accusation of racism. Let us look at some versions of this argument:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of racism or racist R.

Conclusion: Person A is a racist because of C.

 

While not a specific named fallacy, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Consider the same sort of logic, which is obviously flawed:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or a corrupt person.

Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

 

Being critical of corruption or a corrupt person does not make you corrupt. While a corrupt person could be critical of corruption or another corrupt person, their criticism is not evidence of corruption. Two other bad arguments are as follows:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.

Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.

Conclusion: Criticism C is false.

 

This is obviously just an ad hominem attack: even if A was a racist, this has no bearing on the truth of C. Consider an argument with the same sort of reasoning:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt person R.

Premise: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

Conclusion: Criticism C is false.

 

This is quite evidently bad logic; otherwise, anyone who criticized corruption would always be wrong.

 

A variant, equally bad, is this:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.

Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.

Conclusion: R is not racist.

 

While not a named fallacy, it is still bad logic: even if person A were a racist, it would not follow that R is not. Once again, consider the analogy with corruption:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt person R.

Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

Conclusion: R is not corrupt.

 

Again, the badness of this reasoning is evident: if it were good logic, any accusation of corruption would be automatically false. At this point it can be said that while these bad arguments are really used, perhaps there are some good arguments that prove that being critical of racism or racists makes a person a racist or proves their criticism is false.

I do agree that there are cases in which critics of certain types of racism are racists. An obvious example would be the Nation of Islam: they assert, on theological grounds, that blacks are innately superior to whites. Someone who believes this could be critical of racism against themselves and they would be a racist criticizing racism (of a specific type). But it is not their criticism of racism that makes them racist; it is their racism that makes them racist.

What is needed is an argument showing that being critical of racism makes someone a racist. That is, if the only information you had about any person was the full text of their criticism you would be able to reliably infer from the criticism that they are racist. Obviously enough, if the criticism contained racism (like a Nation of Islam member criticizing white racism because of their view that blacks are inherently superior to whites) one could do this easily. But to assume that every criticism of racism must contain racism because it is a criticism of racism would beg the question. Also, pointing to racists who make a criticism of racism and inferring that all critics who make that same criticism are thus racists would be to fall into the guilt by association fallacy. And, of course, even if a critic were racist, it would be an ad hominem to infer their criticism is thus false. A racist can rightfully accuse another racist of racism.

 While the “ideal” argument would show that all criticisms of racism make one racist (and, even “better”, disprove the criticism) such an argument would be suspiciously powerful: it would show that every critic of racism is a racist and perhaps automatically disprove any criticisms about racism. Probably the best way to argue for such an argument is to focus on showing that being critical of racism requires criticizing people based on their race and then making a case for why this is racist. The idea seems to be that being critical of racism requires accepting race and using it against other races (or one’s own), thus being racist. But this seems absurd if one considers the following analogy.

Imagine, if you will, a world even more absurd than our own. In this world, no one developed the idea of race. Instead, people were divided up by their earlobes. Broadly speaking, humans have two types of earlobes. One is the free earlobe—the lobe hangs beyond the attachment point of the ear to the head. The other is the attached earlobe: it attaches directly to the head. In this absurd world, the free lobed were lauded as better than the attached lobed. Free lobed scientists and writers asserted that the free lobed are smarter, more civilized, less prone to crime and so on for all  virtues. In contrast, the attached lobed were presented as bestial, savage, criminal, stupid and immoral.  And thus, lobism was born. The attached lobed were enslaved for a long period of time, then freed. After that, there were systematic efforts to oppress the attached lobed; though progress could not be denied. For example, a person with partially attached lobes was elected President. But there are still many problems attributed to lobism.

In this weird world some people are critical of lobism and argue that aside from the appearance of ear lobes, there is no biological difference between the groups. Would it make sense to infer that their criticism of lobism entails that they are lobists? That they have prejudice against the free lobed, discriminate against them and so on? Does it mean that they believe lobist claims are real: that the lobes determine all these other factors such as morality, intelligence and so on? Well, if critics of racism must be racists, then critics of lobism must be lobist. If one of us went into that world and were critical of lobism, then we would be lobists. This seems absurd: one can obviously be critical of lobism or racism without being a lobist or racist.

As noted in previous essays, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) created a stir when they posted an article on diversity and D&D. The company made some minor changes to the 2024 version of the game which generated some manufactured controversy.  The company took the approach of “portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.” They also decided to make a change that “offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D’s many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.”

While the AD&D Monster Manual allowed individual monsters to vary in alignment and Dungeon Masters have always broken racial stereotypes in their campaigns, there has also been a common practice to portray races and species in accord with established in-game stereotypes. Drow and orcs are traditionally monstrous and evil while elves and dwarves are usually friendly and good.

AD&D also established the idea that fantasy races have specific physical and mental traits. AD&D also set minimum and maximum scores for the game stats. For example, half-orcs have a maximum Intelligence score of 17, a Wisdom score limit of 14, and their highest possible Charisma is 12. The game also divided characters by sex; females of all the races could not be as strong as the males. A PC’s race also limited what class they could take and how far they could progress. Going back to half-orcs, they could not be druids, paladins, rangers, magic users, illusionists, or monks. They could be clerics, fighters or thieves, albeit with limits on their maximum level. They were, however, able to level without racial limits as assassins. This is why AD&D players are suspicious of half-orc PCs; they are probably evil assassins. As a side note, the only PCs I have killed as a player have been half-orc assassins who decided tried to assassinate me. Given that race has been such an important part of D&D, it is no wonder the changes upset some players.

While some assume all critics of the changes are racist, I will not make that mistake. There are good, non-racist arguments for not changing the game. The problem is that racists (or trolls using racism) also use the same arguments. A difference between the two, aside from the racism, is that honest critics are arguing in good faith while racists (and trolls using racism) are arguing in bad faith. The main distinction is in their goals: a good faith critic opposes the changes for reasons they give in public. Those arguing in bad faith conceal their true motives and goals.

Some claim the people making the bad faith arguments are probably just trolls and not racists. But this distinction does not matter. Consider the following analogy. Imagine Sally takes communion at church. The wine tastes odd and later someone Tweets at her “did u like the atheist piss in ur blood of Christ? Lol!” Consider these three options. First, the person does not have a real commitment to atheism and is just trolling Sally to get a reaction. Second, the person hates Sally personally and was out to get her. Third, the person is an atheist who hates religious people and went after Sally because she is religious.

On the one hand, the person’s motives do not really matter: Sally still drank their urine. That is, the harm done does not depend on why it is done.  On the other hand, one can debate the relative badness of the motivations—but this does not seem to change the harm. Going back to racism, the person’s motivation does not matter in terms of the harm they cause by defending and advancing racism. Now, to the argument.

A good-faith argument can be made by claiming there is in-game value of having distinct character races, such as allowing people different experiences. Just as having only one character class would be dull, only having one basic race to play would also be dull. So, just as the classes should be meaningfully different, so too should the fictional races. While there are legitimate concerns about how racists can exploit the idea that races differ in abilities, it can also be argued that people understand the distinction between the mechanics of the fantasy world and reality. It can also be argued that we can stop the slippery slope slide from accepting fantasy races as different while not embracing real-world racism. One could even make a positive argument: people playing the game get accustomed to fictional diversity and recognize that PCs of different types bring different strengths to the party, something that extends analogically to the real world.

Unfortunately, this same sort of argument can be used in bad faith. One tactic is to use this argument but then slide into alleged differences between real people and then slide into actual racism. As a concrete example, I have seen people begin with what seems to be a reasonable discussion of D&D races that soon becomes corrupt. One common racist (or troll) tactic is to start by bringing up how D&D has subraces for many PC races. There are subraces of elves, dwarves, halflings and others that have different abilities. The clever racist (or troll) will suggest there should be human subraces in the game. On the face of it, this seems fine: they are following what is already established in the game. At this point, the person could still be a non-racist who likes the idea of fantasy subraces and thinks it would be cool to have different options when they play a human. But the racist will move on to make references to real-world ethnic groups, asking how one would stat whites, Asians, African-Americans and so on. The person can insist that they are just following the logic of the game and they seem to be right. After all, if the game has many sub-races with meaningful differences, then the same could apply to humans. And this is exactly how a racist can exploit this aspect of the game. A persuasive racist can convince people that they never moved from discussing D&D into racism and they can use the honest critics as cover. This shows why the change has merit, it could deny racists a tool.

Being an old school gamer, I do like the idea of distinct races in games. This is because of the variety they offer for making characters. While I do not want to yield this to the racists, I can see the need for a change to counter the racists. This would be yet another thing made worse by racists.

A second argument is a reductio ad absurdum argument. The idea is to assume that something is true and then derive an absurdity or contradiction from this assumption. This shows that assumption is false. In the case of races in D&D, some people have noted that the proposed approach would logically lead to all creatures in the game being the same. One person, I recall, asserted that the proposed changes entail that tigers and beholders would have the same stats. Another person joked (?) that this would also mean that gnolls would be “friendly puppers.” The idea was, of course, to show that assuming the changes should be accepted would lead to absurd results: no one wants monsters to all have the same stats and no one wants all the game creatures to be good. 

While this could be a good faith argument, there are some concerns. One is that reducing the changes to absurdity in this manner seems to require using the slippery slope fallacy or at least hyperbole and the straw man fallacy. No one is seriously proposing to give all monsters the same statistics or that they will all be morally good. In terms of the slippery slope, no reason has been given that WotC would take the changes to these absurd extremes. At best these would be poor good faith arguments. Depending on where a person goes with them, they could also be bad faith arguments; after all, they do mirror the real-world racist arguments that claim it is absurd to think everyone is perfectly equal and then argue for racism.

I obviously do not think that all monsters should have identical stats nor that all monsters should be good. But this is consistent with the changes and one can easily adopt them and avoid the slippery slope slide into absurdity. In closing, whatever changes WotC makes to D&D, they have no control over what people can do in their own campaigns.

When the culture war opened a gaming front, I began to see racist posts in gaming groups on Facebook and other social media. Seeing these posts, I wondered whether they are made by gamers who are racists, racists who game or merely trolls (internet, not D&D).

Gamers who are racists are actual gamers that are also racists. Racists who play games (or pretend to play them) are doing so as a means to recruit others into racism. While right-wing hate groups recruit video gamers, there seems to be no significant research into recruitment through tabletop games like D&D. My discussion does not require any racists who game; all that is needed is gamers who are racist. Unfortunately, you can easily find them on social media.

An easy way to summon racists is to begin a discussion of diversity in gaming or mention of the revised 2024 rules. But surely there are non-racists who disagree with diversity in gaming and the changes WotC has made in the 2024 rules? Is it not hyperbole and a straw man to cast all critics of diversity as racists? This is a fair and excellent point: to assume every critic of diversity and the game changes is a racist would be bad reasoning. But while some racists are openly racist, others use stealth. They advance arguments that seem reasonable and non-racist while occasionally letting a hint of racism show through. But not so much racism that it cannot be plausibly denied.

There is also another problem: the honest non-racist critic and a stealthy racist will often advance the same arguments. So, what is the difference, other than the racism? The answer is that the critic is arguing in good faith while the racist is arguing in bad faith.

As a philosopher, I will start with the philosophical definition of an argument. In philosophy, an argument is a set of claims, one of which is supposed to be supported by the others. There are two types of claims in an argument. The first type of claim is the conclusion.  This is the claim that is supposed to be supported by the premises. A single argument has one and only one conclusion, although the conclusion of one argument can be used as a premise in another argument.

The second type of claim is the premise. A premise is a claim given as evidence or a reason to logically accept the conclusion. Aside from practical concerns, there is no limit to the number of premises in an argument. When assessing any argument there are two factors to consider: the quality of the premises and the quality of the reasoning. The objective of philosophical argumentation is to make a good argument with true (or at least plausible) premises. Roughly put, the goal is to reach the truth.

Philosophical argumentation is different from persuasion as the goal of persuasion is to get the audience to believe a claim whether it is true or false. As Aristotle noted, philosophical argumentation is weak as persuasion. Empty rhetoric and fallacies (errors in reasoning) have greater psychological force (though they lack all logical force). The stage is thus set to talk about bad faith.

The foundation of arguing in good faith is the acceptance of the philosophical definition of argument: the goal is to provide plausible premises and good reasoning to reach the truth. This entails that the person must avoid intentionally committing fallacies, knowingly making false claims, and misusing rhetoric. A person can, of course, still employ persuasive techniques. Good faith argumentation does not require debating like a stereotypical robot or being dull as dust. But good faith argumentation precludes knowingly substituting rhetoric for reasons. A person can, in good faith, argue badly and even unintentionally commit fallacies because a person can make bad arguments in good faith. A person can, obviously, also make untrue claims when arguing in good faith. But as long as these are errors  rather than lies and the person put in effort to check their claims, then they can still be arguing in good faith. 

Arguing in good faith also requires that the person be honest about whether they believe their claims and whether they believe their reasoning is good. A person need not believe what they are arguing for, since a person can advance an argument, they disagree with as part of a good faith discussion. For example, I routinely present arguments that oppose my own views when I am doing philosophy.

One must also be honest about one’s goals when arguing from good faith. To illustrate, a critic of changes to D&D who is open about their belief that they are detrimental to D&D would be acting in good faith. A racist who argues against changes in D&D hoping to lure people into racism while concealing their motives would be arguing in bad faith. As would be suspected, a clever racist will conceal their true motives when trying to radicalize the normies. There is also the possibility that a person is trolling. But if someone is trolling with racism it does not matter that they are a troll for they are still doing the racist’s work for them.

While there are objective methods for sorting out the quality of arguments and the truth of claims, determining motives and thoughts can be hard. As such, while I can easily tell when someone is committing an ad hominem fallacy, I cannot always tell when someone is engaged in bad faith argumentation. This is more in the field of psychology than philosophy as it involves discerning motives and intentions. However, sorting out motives and intents is something we all do, and we can divine from a person’s actions and words what their motives and intents might be. But we should use caution before accusing someone of arguing in bad faith and this accusation certainly should not be used as a bad faith tactic. To use accusations of bad faith as a rhetorical device or an ad hominem would be bad faith argumentation and would, of course, prove nothing. But why should people argue in good faith?

There are two broad reasons why people should do so. The first is ethical: arguing in good faith is being honest and arguing in bad faith is deceitful.  Obviously, one could counter this by arguing against honesty and in favor of deceit. The second is grounded in critical thinking: bad faith argumentation generally involves bad logic, untruths, and a lack of clarity. As such, arguing in good faith is ethical and rational. Bad faith argumentation is the opposite. Why, then, do people argue in bad faith?

One reason is that bad faith reasoning can work well as persuasion. If one rejects truth as the goal and instead focuses on winning, then bad faith argumentation would be the “better” choice. 

A second reason is that a person might risk harm, such as social backlash, for arguing their views in good faith. In such cases, hiding their views would be prudent. As a good example, a person who wants to get people to accept human rights in a dictatorship might argue in bad faith, hoping to “trojan horse” people into accepting their views. If they openly argued for human rights, they risk being imprisoned or killed. As an evil example, a racist might argue in bad faith, hoping to “trojan horse” people into accepting their views. If they were openly racist in a D&D Facebook group, they would face censure and might be kicked out of the group. So arguing acting in bad faith is the only way they will be able to poison the group from the inside. A third reason is that bad faith reasoning can lure people down a path they would not follow if it were honestly labeled. Such a use does raise moral questions; some might advance a utilitarian argument to defend its use for good while others might condemn such deceit even if it is alleged it is to achieve a good end.

In the next essay I will look at some arguments against some of WotC’s policies that can be made in good or bad faith

A few years ago the owners of D&D, Wizards of the Coast, issued an article on diversity. In the previous essay, I advanced two arguments in defense of some of what Wizards proposed. One is the utilitarian argument stolen from Plato that harmful aspects of art can harm a person’s character and could increase their chances of behaving badly in the real world. The second is a Kantian style argument that it does not matter whether immoral content causes harm, what matters is that the content is immoral. I ended the essay noting an obvious concern with my argument: the same reasoning would seem to apply to two core aspects of D&D: killing and looting.

As an aside, I lived through the Satanic Panic D&D faced in the 1980s. The argument against D&D was like Plato’s argument but with a Christian modification that D&D would lead people to Satanism and other cults. Like most other moral panics from the right, this was debunked long ago. Now back to killing and theft.

Using Plato’s argument as a template, it is easy to argue that violence and looting should be removed from D&D: engaging in fictional violence and theft could corrupt people and make them more likely to behave badly in real life. I can also reuse the Kantian argument: even if hacking up dragons and looting their hoards had no impact on people, allowing the immoral content of killing and stealing would be immoral. This would allow for an argument from analogy: if D&D should be cleansed of racist elements for moral reasons, then it should also be cleansed of violence and theft on moral grounds. There are two main options in terms of where this reasoning should take us.

The first is to accept the analogy and agree D&D should also be cleansed of violence and theft. This would radically change the game, although some people have run violence-free campaigns. The second is to take this analogy as a reductio ad absurdum of the original argument. If using the same logic (what is known as parity of reasoning) leads to an absurd conclusion, then this can be taken as refuting arguments with the same logic. A well-known example of this is philosophy is Gaunilo’s reply to St. Anselm’s ontological argument.

Since D&D is inherently a game of combat and looting, it would be absurd to remove these elements. This would be analogous to removing cars from NASCAR. Since the violence argument is reduced to absurdity, the diversity argument is absurd as well. D&D should remain unchanged: killing, looting and no diversity changes. While this line of reasoning is appealing, it can be challenged.

For this reasoning to be good,  fictional violence and theft must be analogous to fictional racism within the game. Interestingly, someone agreeing with this reasoning would need to agree that racism, killing and looting are all bad but they should not be removed from the game. Someone who thinks that racism, killing, and looting are all morally fine would not need to make the absurdity argument. They could just argue there is no moral reason to remove any of these from the game. So, can a person believe that killing, stealing and racism are bad while consistently supporting diversity on moral grounds while also allowing in game killing and looting? The answer is “yes” and supporting this requires arguing that the analogy between killing and racism breaks down.

The obvious way to do this is to point out a relevant difference between racism and killing: while racism seems to always be wrong, there are arguments that support morally acceptable violence. These include such things as Locke’s moral argument for self-defense and centuries of work in just war theory. In contrast, there seem to be no good forms of racism or cases in which racism is morally defensible. While someone might use violence for self-defense against a wrongful attack and be morally justified, there seem to be no cases of racism in self-defense: that one must use morally acceptable racism to protect oneself against wrongful racism. Likewise, there is no body of ethics that constitutes just racism theory. To be fair to the racists, they could argue in favor of the ethics of racism and I certainly invite good faith efforts to publicly make such a case.

Because there are moral distinctions in violence, D&D could include ethical violence with no moral problem. It would not be corrupting, nor would it be inherently evil. In D&D people typically play heroes doing heroic deeds such as fighting evil foes and looting their foes to continue their heroic efforts. There are, however, three obvious counters to this argument.

One is that there are arguments that violence is always wrong, and one could be a moral absolutist about violence. If violence is always wrong, then it would be wrong to include it in D&D. While not without its problems, pacifism is a coherent moral view and would certainly make D&D morally problematic if it were correct.

The second is that people play non-good and even evil characters in D&D who engage in evil acts of violence. I have played evil characters myself, my favorite being my delusional anti-paladin D’ko.  One could argue that playing evil PCs would be immoral. The obvious reply is that if one is playing the role and it is not impacting the person, then there would be no moral problem: no one is being harmed, and the evil deeds are fictional. If someone were to get into the role too much and engage in behavior that did hurt other people then that would be wrong as real harm would be done. This could even be harm done at the table. For example, a player who has their character rape defeated foes and graphically describes this to the other players could be doing real harm.  Also, a Kantian might disagree about the distinction between fictional and real evil and argue that to will evil even in play would still be evil.

The third is that even in games where all the PCs are good (or at least not evil), the DM must take on the role of any evil NPCs the players interact with and engage in fictional acts of evil. As such, it would seem hard to avoid including unjust violence in D&D. From a utilitarian perspective, this would be morally acceptable if the fictional violence did no harm, either in terms of corrupting people or inflicting suffering on those involved. Again, a Kantian approach might forbid even harmlessly playing an evil being as a DM but some Kantians are notorious as killjoys.

As my closing argument, I contend there is a meaningful distinction between playing an evil character doing evil acts of fictional violence and having the game content mirror the racism of the real world. To use an obvious analogy, this is the distinction between an actor playing the role of a racist in a movie and knowingly acting in a movie that serves as racist propaganda.  As such, D&D can retain violence, and players can play evil characters (within limits) while avoiding moral harms. But the racism should certainly go.

A few years ago, Wizards of the Coast(WotC), who own Dungeons & Dragons, issued a statement on diversity. As would be expected, the responses split along ideological lines and the culture war continues to this day. The D&D front of the culture war is personal for me. I started playing D&D in 1979 and have been a professional gaming writer since 1989. This ties me into the gaming aspect of the war. I am also a philosophy professor, so this ties me into the moral and aesthetic aspects of this fight.

The statement made by WotC has three main points. The first addresses race in the real world. The second addresses the portrayal of fictional races, such as orcs and drow, within the game. The third addresses racism from the real world within the game, with the example of how a Romani-like people were portrayed in the Curse of Strahd. In this essay I will focus on the in-game issues.

Before getting to the in-game issues, I will pre-empt some of the fallacious arguments. While it is tempting to use straw man attacks and hyperbole in this war, WotC cannot prevent gamers from doing as they wish in their own games. If you want your orcs to be evil, vegans, mathematicians or purple, you can and there is nothing WotC or Hasbro can do. Any change of WotC policy towards D&D races (or species) only applies to WotC. As such, the only censorship issue applicable here is self-censorship.

As always in the culture war, there were (and are) ad hominem attacks on folks at WotC. Most of these attribute “wicked” motives to them and take these alleged motivations as relevant to the correctness of their claims. In some cases, the criticism is that WotC is engaged in “woke marketing” to sell more products. While this can be evaluated as a business strategy, it proves nothing about the correctness of their position. In other cases, those at WotC have been accused of being liberals who are making things soft and safe for the dainty liberal snowflakes. This is also just an ad hominem and proves nothing. One must engage with the actual claims rather than flail away with insults.

To be fair, one can raise legitimate questions about the ethics of the folks at WotC: their motives do matter when assessing them as people. If this is merely cynical snowflake marketing, then they could be criticized as hypocrites. But their motives are still irrelevant to the assessment of their position and plans. It is to this that I now turn.

While the Monster Manual from AD&D does allow for monsters to differ in alignment from their standard entries in the book, many fictional races in the game have long been presented as “monstrous and evil.” These famously include orcs and the drow (a type of elf). The concern expressed by WotC is that the descriptions of these fictional races mirror the way racism manifests in the real world. Their proposed fix was to portray “all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.” In the case of real-world racism manifesting in their products, such as the depiction of a fictional version of the Romani, they plan to rewrite some older content and ensure that future products are free of this sort of thing. These changes raise both moral and aesthetic concerns.

One way to defend the traditional portrayal of fictional races in D&D is to, obviously enough, appeal to tradition. Since Tolkien, orcs have been portrayed as evil. Since the G and D series of modules,  D&D drow have been evil. The obvious problem with this defense is that it the appeal to tradition is a fallacy, one I have addressed at length in other essays.

Another way to defend the idea that some fictional races are inherently evil (or at least almost always evil) is to use in-game metaphysics. Until recently, good and evil were objective aspects of the standard D&D world. Spells could detect good and evil, holy and unholy weapons inflicted damage upon creatures of opposing alignments, and certain magic impacted creatures based on their alignment. Demons and devils are, by their nature, evil in classic D&D. Angels and other celestials are, by nature, good in classic D&D. While alignment does have some role in D&D 5E, this role is miniscule by way of comparison.

In most D&D worlds, gods of good and evil exist and certain races were created by such gods. For example, the elves have mostly good deities, with the most obvious exception being the goddess Lolth, the queen of the demonweb pits. As such, the notion of races that are predominantly evil or good makes sense in such game worlds. As good and evil are metaphysically real, creatures could be imbued by divine and infernal powers with alignments.

While this defense does have its appeal, it raises an obvious concern: in the real-world people defend real racism with appeals to good and evil. They invoke creation stories to “prove” that certain people are better and others inferior. As the folks at WotC note, fantasy worlds often mirror the racism of the real world.

One reply to such concerns is to point out that most people can distinguish between the fictional world of D&D and the real world. Casting orcs and drow as evil and monstrous, even using language analogous to that used by racists in the real world, is nothing to be concerned about because people know the difference. The player who curses the “foul green skins” in game will not thus become a racist in the real world and curse the “wicked whites.” Thus, one might conclude, WotC stands refuted. There is, however, an ancient philosophical counter to this reply.

In the Republic Plato presents an argument for censorship based on the claim that art appeals to emotions and encourages people to give in to these emotions.  Giving way to these emotions is undesirable because it can lead to shameful or even dangerous behavior. On his view, viewing tragic plays might lead a person to give in to self-pity and behave poorly. Exposure to violent art might cause a person to yield more readily to the desire to commit violence. While Plato does not talk about racism (because the ancients had no such concept), his argument would apply here as well: engaging in fictional racism can lead people to racism in the real world. As such, Plato would presumably praise WotC for this action.

At this point it is reasonable to bring up the obvious analogy to video games. While the power of video games to influence ethics would seem to be an empirical matter, the current research is inconclusive because the “…evidence is all over the place” —so it currently comes down to a matter of battling intuitions regarding their power to influence. So, I will turn to Plato’s most famous student.

As Aristotle might say, players become habituated by their play.  This includes not just the skills of play but also the moral aspects of what is experienced in play. This, no doubt, is weaker than the influence of the habituation afforded by the real world. But to say that D&D games with moral components have no habituating influence is analogous to saying that video games with hand-eye coordination components have no habituating impact on hand-eye coordination beyond video games. One would have to assert players learn nothing from their hours of play, which seems unlikely.

I am not claiming that D&D takes control of the players in a Mazes and Monsters scenario, just that experiences shape how we perceive and act, something that is obviously true. So, I do not think that people who play in D&D games casting orcs and drow as monstrous and even those that mirror real world racism would make players into white supremacists. Rather, I agree with the obvious claim: our experiences influence us and getting comfortable with fictional racism makes it slightly easier to get comfortable with real world racism.

For those who prefer Kant, one could also advance a Kantian style argument: it does not matter whether the in-game racism that mirrors real world racism has an impact on people’s actions or not, what matters is whether such racism is wrong or right in and of itself. If racism is wrong, then even fictional racism would thus be wrong.

As someone who regularly games, I can see the obvious danger in the arguments I have just advanced: would not the same arguments apply to a core aspect of D&D, namely the use of violence? I will address these matters in the next essay.

 

Most players agree that playing tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs) should be fun. But at the table, and away from the table, people are subject to the false consensus effect. This is a cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances.” In the case of D&D, a player will tend to think that everyone agrees with their view of fun. For example, a player who enjoys spending hours in deep role-playing encounters will assume everyone else is enjoying these encounters. But fun, at the table and away, is subjective. For example, I ran a 15k race yesterday and it was fun. Or, more accurately, it was fun for me. Football games are being televised today, but being forced to endure watching football is not fun. Or, as I should say, not fun for me.

Over the years, people have told me I am wrong about running being fun and watching football being awful. They are right and wrong: running is fun for me, not for them. Watching football is fun for them, awful for me. This is because fun, like food preferences, is subjective. What is fun is fun to you, but probably not everyone. What is fun for other people might not be fun for you. As with whether you like plantains or not, there is no right or wrong. There is only like or dislike.

While this might seem too obvious to be worth mentioning, the false consensus effect means that while we know that people enjoy different things, we still tend to assume that everyone at our table will share our view of what is fun in the game. For example, if you like minimal role-playing and maximum combat, you will tend to assume that is what everyone enjoys, and you probably wonder why other players sometimes won’t stop talking to the non-player characters (NPCs) when they should be killing them. This is why we need to remind ourselves that the other people at the table might have a different idea of what is fun, and we should make some effort to find out what that is. It is also worth mentioning that while there are selfish players who are at the table solely for their own fun, a person can appear selfish because they honestly think that everyone else is also enjoying their way of playing. For example, if a player loves going off on lengthy solo role-playing encounters in the game, they might think everyone else is enjoying this as an audience to their role playing. But the other players are probably bored and spend that time on their phones looking at memes. So, it is good to check in with the other people at the table and see if they are also having fun.

It seems reasonable to accept that players have a right to have fun at the table, and this is the approach I try to take a Dungeon Master (DM) and as a player. One should also remember that, just as with other rights, other people have the right to have fun as well. So, it is not that only I have the right to have fun, we all have that right. And, as with other rights, such as the right to free expression, this means that I should and must accept limits on my right so that other people can enjoy their right. For example, if I really enjoy combat, but I know that other players enjoy role-playing encounters in which they talk to the monsters, I should curb by murderous inclinations from time to time, so they won’t have to rely on speak with dead to talk to the monsters.

While, as noted above, fun is subjective, there are some things that are not fun for anyone. One example of this is being unable to act on your turn in D&D. At most tables, a player can spend minutes of time trying to sort out what they will do in seconds of combat. This might be because the situation is dire and complex, and the wrong choice could be the doom of the party. Or it could be because they do not know their character very well, they haven’t read up on their spells, or they were watching football when it wasn’t their turn. This means that if a player is unable to act on their turn, they might have to wait fifteen minutes or longer before they can do anything. While it can be fun to observe the combat, many players tend to check out when they cannot act. Phones, of course, have made this easy to do.

Since I know this, in my role as DM I try to ensure that a player is always able to take their turn. One key part of this involves being very restrained when deciding whether the monsters use spells or abilities that can “steal” a player’s turn (or turns). Spells like Sleep, Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, and Banish can take a player character (PC) out of the action, leaving the player with nothing to do. Abilities that stun, paralyze, petrify or control a PC can also steal a player’s turn. And, obviously enough, knocking a PC to zero (or killing them) can steal a turn.

When judging whether to use such abilities, I make a quick estimate of how likely it is that it will steal a player’s turn. This involves some obvious things, like checking how likely it is the PC will be affected but also less obvious things, like how likely it is that another player will do something to save the PC if they are affected. If you, as a DM, know your party works together well, then you can use such things more often. For example, if you know that if the fighter gets held, the party will try to rescue them, then you can have the enemy cleric hit the fight with Hold Person, since they’ll probably not miss their turn, and the other players will have fun rescuing them. As with running the game in general, it is a balancing act in which the DM tries to present a meaningful, but fun, challenge. If you know the party can deal with “lose a turn” abilities and spells, then they can be safely used without risking killing a player’s fun. But if the party cannot or will not counter them, then it is best to avoid them. After all, the point of playing is to have fun and someone who is not playing is probably not having fun.