“My first Dungeon Master was an anti-racist skinhead,” Jeremy Cobb says of his introduction to the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
For Cobb, a 32-year-old actor, one of the joys of D&D is that it unites nonconformists – “the nerds who didn’t want to play sports”, as he puts it.
Despite that, efforts to draw back from stereotypes and give the orcs, elves, and dwarves who populate its fantasy world a little more individuality have provoked a rightwing backlash.
“For me, overall, from the creative side, the game is doing better than ever,” says Cobb, who started playing in 2018 and is now a professional Dungeon Master (or referee/narrator). “But from the business side, fan relationship side and culture war side? No, not really.”
The latest controversy involves the new rulebook for the game, in which “races” of characters have been renamed “species” and they no longer have specific attributes. Previously, orcs were labelled as savage, dwarves as strong, and elves as perceptive.
Announcing the changes, the D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) said “race is a problematic term that has prejudiced links between real world people and the fantasy peoples of D&D Worlds”.
But critics have complained that attempts to make the game more inclusive will make it less fun, with some social media users complaining of “wokeism personified” and “inclusive oblivion”.
The foreword to a book to commemorate D&D’s 50th anniversary, The Making of Original D&D, referred to “derogatory language” and “cultural appropriation” in the 1974 version, prompting Elon Musk to urge Hasbro, the owner of WOTC, to “burn in hell”.
Writing in Wargamer – a site dedicated to tabletop games and wargaming – the writer Timothy Linward conceded that D&D’s earliest version of orcs as “a simple violent threat to civilisation that needed to be pacified by brave adventurers” had “unfortunately echoed stereotypes used against tribal and indigenous subcultures”, but argued that the game’s “core fantasy relies on the existence of uncomplicated baddies”.
“Dungeons & Dragons “– considered purely as a rule system – is not a game about creating intercultural harmony in a multiracial community”, he said.
Cobb, of the podcast 3 Black Halflings, which explores diversity in D&D and pop culture, welcomed the rule changes, saying they make the game more “customisable, open and friendly … it’s easier for people to come in and build a character”.
He sees two issues in the background of D&D’s “culture war” – an old guard of players unsettled by a more diverse wave of fans attracted by the boom in online content and D&D featuring in Stranger Things, and lingering tensions between the game’s publishers and fans over previous, unconnected attempts to maximise profits from the game.
Welcoming the dropping of the term “races” as a positive change – although he would have preferred “lineage” to “species” – Cobb, who grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving to the UK, said: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having an individual character who behaves brutally – but when you start painting a particular race that way, you’re inevitably going to draw on real world stereotypes.”
Pointing out that fans don’t have to use the new rulebook, he said: “A lot of this is down to ‘this is my thing, who are you coming in and saying my thing is not perfect, how dare you criticise it for stuff that was never a problem for me, it was never designed for you anyway, and if you want to play, accept the hierarchical structure and don’t complain’ – that’s the mentality.”
Dungeons & Dragons is one of a series of popular franchises to get a more inclusive rebrand, and face a backlash, in recent years.
In 2021, Hasbro dropped “Mr” from the name of the Mr Potato Head toy – a star of the Toy Story films – saying: “Hasbro is making sure all feel welcome in the Potato Head world by officially dropping the Mr from the Mr Potato Head … to promote gender equality and inclusion.”
It later clarified that Mr and Mrs Potato Head would still be available.
Ms Monopoly, touted as the “the first game where women make more money than men” was released to some criticism, also by Hasbro, in 2019.
The 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters was hit by a coordinated wave of negative reviews by people angered at its female-led cast, while 2017’s Star Wars Episode VIII: the Last Jedi was accused of being “too politically correct” with its more diverse cast, prompting star John Boyega to say such criticism usually stems from “one tweet from a guy with three followers and then a lot of people react to it”.
