Been thinking a bit about the wrestling that #DnD and its fans need to do with issues like racism and colonialism in the game, in light of a lot of the discourse that's been going around.

(Just stream-of-consciousness) +

When introducing new players to D&D I sometimes refer to pieces of the design as "legacy code." In truth it's a little different; D&D doesn't 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘦 the use of old structures and confusingly overloaded terms. They're just familiar, and thus nonthreatening. +

D&D has a self-selection problem: The people who started playing D&D back in the '70s and '80s are from a group who accepted its premises and its terms from the outset, and find these features familiar and comforting. It can be hard to get them to swallow changes. +

Ergo 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩 retains its name even though it doesn't do cold damage and isn't touch range. Thus "level" for your character's experience isn't the same as "level" for spells and you have to explain to new players why a 3rd-level wizard can't cast a 3rd-level spell. +

The idea of "race" using terms handed down from colonial times, falsely applying the idea of inherent physical and mental qualities for various groups of people, got mixed up with the notion of nonhuman entities distinct from humanity. Now it's familiar, accepted. +

Doesn't matter that elves and orcs aren't real. Using the same language, the same ideas, and the same excuses as real-world racism means it's stuck in the same semiotic box. So it needs to change, but it's been so normalized that gaming culture is resistant to that change. +

As other posters have noted, this is amplified by 5e's reluctance to engage in changes of naming conventions or familiarity of terms and ideas. When 4e came out, people were already happy playing 3e. The result was that the market resisted uptake of the changes... +

... and Pathfinder wound up eating D&D sales for lunch. This is irrespective of any merit that 4e might've had as a game. People were happy with what they were already doing, and PF let them keep doing it, so that's where their money went. +

5e introduces some substantial changes from a design standpoint, but many of its underlying concepts hail back to earlier D&D. It's using familiar, comfortable terminology to give people a sense of ease. But it's not familiar and comfortable for everybody. +

(There's a whole 'nother essay about how the game's systems have changed markedly and people are seemingly more OK with that than with changing its dramatic framework and cultural assumptions, but that's a tangent.) +

Now D&D's going through another explosion like it did in the '80s. Supported by regular new releases and driven by third-party publishers, podcasters, live plays and new forms of engagement, the game's reached out to a huge audience. +

As with other social issues in the era of the internet, today we hear from people speaking up about problems and hurtful issues. Now those voices are heard on our social media forums. And we see those faces playing the game, too, on those live plays and podcasts. +

Yet D&D's been slow to change, even in the face of clear calls for better treatment among people who've made its difficulties obvious. I don't believe this is malfeasance, but there is certainly a huge amount of institutional inertia at work here. +

Current D&D is still living in the shadow of all the edition wars of gaming, whether it's the huge shifts seen in 3e/4e/PF/5e, or watching the wars in other games like Shadowrun and the World of Darkness. It's at a new high of popularity, and nobody wants to lose that $$$. +

And like any large brand, it's not an especially agile one. RPG book releases for a big brand like this aren't the sort of thing one does in a week or a month. Even moreso when grappling with all of these issues and their potential explosive repercussions. +

But D&D will have to grapple with them. Older players fall away and die off. That's the nature of linear time. New players who come to it without the expectation of "these things are just how it is" are going to demand better. Many have already made their own interpretations. +

(We see this in things like DM's Guild releases that focus on restructuring D&D away from "race" or from colonial themes.) From a business perspective, there's a tipping point to hit, when the calls for change start to outweigh the calls for familiarity. +

Personally I think D&D should swing sooner rather than later. The people who want D&D to embrace racism and imperialism are a demographic that's toxic to your ability to gain new players. They're gatekeepers by nature, b/c they insist on "their way" even if it's hurtful. +

The people who want these changes overwhelmingly include newer players, younger players, people who came in due to exposure by streams and 'casts. (Not exclusively, of course.) And they are the ones who are potentially gonna be with this game for another 50, 60, 100 years. +

They're also the ones who are going to be future designers of the game. But people are going to remember how D&D handled this transition, and some people may leave the game behind entirely if it doesn't address these hurdles. So even from a business perspective, it's best... +

... to change now and get on that wave, ride it to continued future success.

And that's aside from the humanitarian imperative to make a game that doesn't propagate hurtful ideologies.

In the end... +

... if D&D "isn't D&D" without racism, xenophobia, bigotry, colonialism, imperialism... yet plenty of people play D&D and find ways to move past these things... then the folx complaining about removing these are the problem.

Train's comin', all aboard for a better game.