"The genre of fantasy itself is so steeped in European mythology and folklore, so steeped in a cultural default of whiteness," he said. Taylor believes part of the racism he experienced while playing D&D has to do with the very roots of the game's fiction. Fantasy literature's complicated history with race "I'm pretty sure we weren't playing as correctly as people would like us to have played, but our campaign that we had was fully representative of who we were," said Taylor. With a group of fellow nerds of colour, Taylor eventually crafted a campaign that lasted from middle school until about his sophomore year of high school. "I to talk about Anansi and Oshun and Olegba, and even code those things as other types of gods," Taylor said, even though those deities didn't exist in D&D when he first began playing.
The new book also introduces new subclasses for virtually every class in the game, effectively allowing players of any race to take on almost any role.īut it wasn't just players introducing real-world stereotypes while playing the game, Taylor said he also became weary of having to constantly explain aspects of African or Eastern mythology to people while he was making decisions in-character. Shawn Taylor points to the characterization of dark elves as evil in Dungeons and Dragons, as well as fantasy more broadly, as an example of the game's and the genre's struggles with race. "They've actually allowed the orcs and the to have more varying personalities - not just have some type of negative cultural determination," Taylor said.ĭrizzt Do'Urden is among the very few virtuous Drow in Dungeons and Dragons canon. While introducing streamlined changes to core D&D gameplay, the optional add-on also gives players the option to expand personality traits for in-game races. "Elves are angelic, orcs aren't," Taylor explained.Īs a response to player criticism, Wizards of the Coast released the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything sourcebook. Prior to the introduction of the latest D&D book on Tuesday, players were required to create characters that have pre-set strengths or weaknesses based on their species. You can be a warrior because you can be big and brawny, but you couldn't be intelligent and sneaky," he recalled. "Or, you're Black so you have to play someone who comes from a villainous family. "It's like, you're Black, so you have to play the duplicitous character," he said.
He's also been a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master for over 30 years. Shawn Taylor is a founding author of The Nerds of Color pop culture website, as well as a founding member of the Black Comix Arts Festival and a lecturer at San Francisco State University.
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