[Eugene Marshall’s system] does everything that Wizards of the Coast swore they were going to do in their recent press release and more…. [So] the big question is, will WotC simply annex Marshall’s system (hopefully paying him an insane amount of money), or are they even now trying to reinvent the wheel (and can they possibly do it better)?
Another twist! I’ve previously dealt with Wizards of the Coast’s announcement regarding increasing diversity in their D&D division, some reactions to it, and the resignation of one of their diverse staff members. Now, Charlie Hall of Polygon.com posted up a review of a new zine called Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e [the D&D 5th edition rulebook] by author and designer Eugene Marshall (2020). Marshall is a tenured Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida International University, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, and has taught at Dartmouth College and Wellesley College. Although his C.V. is mostly about Spinoza, he teaches classes in Philosophy and Science Fiction, and then there’s this piece: “An Attempt at a Philosophy of Role Playing Games, (In Progress).” I obtained a copy of the zine, and I’ll review it here.
This $14.95 softcover ($9.95 PDF) does everything that WotC swore they were going to do in their recent press release and more. As a reminder, here’s WotC’s proposal regarding rule changes:
Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) 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.
Ok, sounds great, but as Hall notes:
D&D spent decades codifying a ruleset that reinforces the racism already endemic in our culture, even when the rules of the game were revised across five editions and more than 40 years. The original RPG is the Ur-game, from which modern video games and even movies now flow. We have all been influenced by it. Ancestry & Culture works to upend that, while keeping the game that millions of people love to play around the world whole.
And it does it in 26 pages. The other 50 pages are full of adventures and other great stuff.
Marshall’s system is already in print, and critics like Hall have nothing but good to say about it, so the big question is, will WotC simply annex Marshall’s system (hopefully paying him an insane amount of money), or are they even now trying to reinvent the wheel (and can they possibly do it better)?
Marshall spends the first three substantive pages (4-6) discussing the concept of race he’s invested in dismantling:
Scientists and philosophers who study race reject the concept of race as a biological fact that discretely individuates groups of people. Race is not a biological reality; rather, it is a social concept constructed and employed differently at different times in history and in different places in the world. It is not like eye color, but like citizenship: something that is based in social relations and concepts, not biology.
In other words, the concept of race as it has been used from at least the Enlightenment forward to the twentieth century is, frankly, bankrupt. This is not to say there is no such thing as ancestry, heritage, and genetic difference, of course. Indeed, our genetics are real, but they are a function of our individual ancestry, not our race. What folks call racial differences simply do not map cleanly onto anything in our biology as simplistic as the concept of race. What’s more, that concept in the real world has been used to justify historic atrocities.
Indeed, racists still use these bogus, faux-scientific justifications to support their prejudice. Because these harmful concepts have no place in our world, they need not be in the stories we tell with our friends either (4-5).
You might say, “Well sure, in OUR world, but elves are completely different from orcs, etc.” Some people pointed out in their comments that orcs were created to be evil, and what’s wrong with that? Marshall throws it out to author N.K. Jemisin who says this about orcs (and half-orcs):
Orcs are human beings who can be slaughtered without conscience or apology…. Creatures that look like people, but aren’t really. Kinda-sorta-people, who aren’t worthy of even the most basic moral considerations, like the right to exist. Only way to deal with them is to control them utterly a la slavery, or wipe them all out. Huh. Sounds familiar…. The whole concept of orcs is irredeemable. Orcs are fruit of the poison vine that is human fear of ‘the Other.’ In games like Dungeons and Dragons, orcs are a ‘fun’ way to bring faceless savage dark hordes into a fantasy setting and then gleefully go genocidal on them…. They’re an amalgamation of stereotypes. And to me, that’s no fun at all (5).
And are orcs and elves different from humans in the fantasy world? Are they different species? Then why are there half-elves and half-orcs, etc.? And if there are those, why aren’t there half-elf/half-orcs? If D&D races are only as different as coyotes and wolves (who have mated to produce the coywolf) then are they really THAT different? And what’s to be gained by throwing out race and replacing it by ancestry and culture?
Well, first off, highly creative, individualized characters that grant freedom of expression. Instead of making a simple decision on race, players have to choose both their ancestry and the culture in which their characters were raised. “Ancestry provides those heritable traits that a character might receive from their biological parents, such as height, average lifespan, and special senses like darkvision”–and Marshall’s system rewards characters of mixed ancestry, giving them more flexibility in choosing these traits and special abilities (4).
A character can have an elven parent and a human parent, or a dwarven parent and a halfling parent. Other characters can have parents who themselves have mixed ancestry. The rules in this section provide mechanics to generate such mixed ancestries. Of course, almost all characters in a fantasy world probably have some degree of mixed ancestry. These rules are intended to allow players to make characters that have two primary ancestries, however, rather than one dominant one (26).
“Culture, on the other hand, is an integrated system of beliefs, values and symbolic practices shared by a particular group or community. Cultural traits include language, skill training, values and education” (4) [Intelligence, Constitution and Charisma]–as it should, since early development, education and likeability may be highly determined by your society (nurture, not nature). If you have good schools and early education you get smarter (as the Head Start program–which I participated in as a child–proves). If you have proper nutrition and exercise growing up, you are going to be healthier. I’ll deal with Charisma in a moment.
However, culture also affects physical attributes (Strength and Dexterity). What’s wrong with saying heredity affects your physical abilities? Marshall cites game designer James Mendez Hodes that:
D&D, like Tolkien, makes race literally real in-game by applying immutable modifiers to character ability scores, skills and other characteristics. The in-game fiction justifies these character traits as absolute realities; they also just happen to be the same cruel and untrue things racists say about different ethnicities (5).
Instead, Marshall argues that although your heredity tells us that you will be tall and broad shouldered, you actually have to work out to be athletic, and the incentive to do that is cultural. If your culture values archery–and you participate–you’ll develop more dexterity. If your culture values Greco-Roman wresting–and you participate–you might develop more strength, etc.
The traditional rules also encourage thinking in terms of “ghettoization”, “the segregation/isolation of a group [usually based on concepts of race] and placement of that group into a figurative or literal position of little power,” thus halflings live in halfling communities, dwarves in dwarven communities, etc. And half-breeds are supposed to be particularly mistreated and ostracized from both their parent cultures. Perhaps these groups choose to self isolate–the elves are aloof and think they’re better than humans–that’s the sunny, perfect picture we tell ourselves [a “bogus, faux-scientific justification”?]. And it leads to translations into our world–“All the brown people really feel safer around other brown people”–not that their choice of residence has anything to do with redlining and practices systemically imposed to create the situation. Not that these communities suffer from location in food deserts, lack of adequate transportation, poor schools based on income taxes, etc.
Marshall’s concept of Culture, on the other hand, embraces diverse, multicultural communities, granting special bonuses, like “Diverse Cultural Traits,” which Hall explains thusly:
Diverse Cultural Traits grants players +2 to their charisma, because diversity is beautiful. They gain the character trait whereby they value personal freedom and creative expression. They have an inner strength whereby they have “neither love of leaders nor desire for followers.” They gain proficiency in two skills of their choice, and they can speak two extra languages that might be spoken in their community.
Basically, characters from these communities develop a better toolset to get along with people different than themselves, and they appreciate those people; they have more diverse cultural resources to draw from–and incentives to do so. If half your community speaks Spanish, you learn to speak Spanish. That all makes you more charismatic.
Maybe it’s all hippie, liberal preaching. But what if it’s closer to the way the world works? Maybe it won’t have any effect on The Real World. But what if it does? What’s the worst that could happen? Our children could grow up “soft,” ready to think the best of other people, and therefore open to being taken advantage of. And yes, they might be. But that’s short-term thinking. In the long-term, if people aren’t mistreated, told there’s only so much to go around, and then placed in impossible situations–if everybody had at least a minimum amount of resources and respect–they might stop thinking about trying to “get one over on” other people, and work harder on getting along with other people.
