Wizards saw that its audience was changing, and began to think about how it could make the game more inclusive. This was a major attitudinal shift: Back in 1975, when prodded about gender stereotypes in D&D, Gygax had written that he’d considered “adding women” to sections of the rule book, including “Raping and Pillaging,” “Whores and Tavern Wenches,” and “Hags and Crones,” as well as “adding an appendix on ‘Medieval Harems, Slave Girls, and Going Viking.’” The stereotype of the reactionary geek whose hatred for women manifests in imagining them as the victims of sexual violence is, let’s say, historically rooted.
But now the company was open to change. In June 2020, during the protests following the murder of George Floyd, the D&D development team acknowledged in a blog post that some earlier versions of the game offered portrayals of fantasy creatures that were “painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in.”
In 2022, Wizards announced that it would be removing the word race from the game and substituting species, noting that “‘race’ is a problematic term that has had prejudiced links between real world people and the fantasy peoples of D&D worlds.” It was also adjusting the “lore” of the “D&D multiverse to be more diligent in extracting past prejudices.” Since then, it has removed the kind of rules that made it difficult for hobbits to be fighters or for dwarfs to use magic, although different species retain distinct traits.
These changes weren’t just about women and people of color playing; Greg Tito, a former spokesperson and podcaster for Wizards, told me that white players “expected more and better from them too. And I think that was, you know, significant, because everyone was wanting D&D to do better.”
Well. Almost everyone.
If your identity was built around being a fan of a marginal pastime, de-geekification meant that suddenly, you weren’t as special anymore. Comic books, video games, fantasy and science fiction, role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons—they were all getting more popular, and trying to appeal to new audiences. Not everyone was happy with the changes that effort inspired.
Those who objected could be divided into two categories: people who found the simpler and more flexible game to be bland; and people who didn’t like the game getting “woke.” This is a slippery term, but it often boils down to things not being quite as racist or sexist as they used to be.