I know it’s Dungeons & Dragons blasphemy. I don’t like Drizzt Do’ Urden
Please understand it has nothing whatsoever to do with the color of his skin or the matriarchal demonolater society he comes from. I had my fill of the Drow in general and good old Drizzt clear back in the early 2nd Ed AD&D days when he was first catching on and the fools at T$R statted him up. I’m happy the novels caught on at the time and pulled more people into gaming, but the character and subsequent popularity made life Hell on Dungeon Masters for years to come.
Drow are banned outright in all of my games. No one ever seemed to want to make anything other than a Drow Ranger or Rogue. As I recall, the Drow were statistically ridiculous even compared to other Elves. I’m not even getting into their societal politics or whack religion. Quite honestly I think Drow were one of the worst things to ever happen to the D&D game.
Disclaimer: This is my blog. This is how I see things and how I feel. There is little factual information being presented. If you have issue with anything being presented, please contact me privately on X (Twitter,) Instagram, BlueSky, or by email. Otherwise, there are lots of platforms out there for you to vent your feelings and opinions, too.
Why I nicknamed him “F’ritzz.”
I used to have nicknames for Elminster and a few other popular characters, too. It’s not a racist thing because of the Drow’s skin color or anything like that. I just don’t like the totally evil Drow concepts. I just don’t like unbalanced species, period. I never have to worry about banning various Kin in Dragonbane because the writers know what they’re doing.
I was actually going to celebrate the day Drow were finally removed from the official game entirely. Good old Wizards of the Coast can’t even do that much without turning it into a spectacle. I’m embarrassed to say WotC holds the Intellectual Property rights to D&D. They could have simply removed Drow from the game entirely and not given an explanation at all. Instead they decided to use it as another excuse to bash on the original creators of the game and remind us about “old white dudes” from the Midwest.
Oh wait. I’m one of those old, white, (presumed cishet) men from the Midwest. I was accused of being a racist before this argument ever started. Is anyone surprised WotC is turning around and saying, “Drow are racist.” These goldfish piloted humans at WotC can’t seem to remember much of anything past 2014 unless…
Why I’m really cheesed off about the “new/not new” 2024 Dungeons & Dragons today.
WotC does not seem to give a rat’s behind about older editions of the game, the lore, the settings, unless their AI can mine it for content, and they can regurgitate it into a new book. I cringe every time I see the old D&D Cartoon gang in the new artwork for the game. You know any day now we’re going to hear how the 1980s cartoon Orcs were a racist stereotype or some other contrived revisionist nonsense. “Oh, noes. Shadow Demon was…” Or pick a character to get thrown under the bus: Tiamat, Venger, Dungeon Master, Eric…
Any time WotC needs a scapegoat for their lack of editing, obviously it’s the “old, bad D&D.” We’ve seen it as far back as the warning labels WotC put on the reprints. See, we didn’t need warning labels back in those days because it was assumed people were smart consumers and could decide for themselves if something was in line with their values.
That’s just it. We never had to worry about “meeting inclusion standards” back in the day because writers and game companies assumed the readers were mature enough to handle their content. If we considered something to be openly racist or misaligned with our values back in the 1980s, we just didn’t buy the damn thing. It wasn’t complicated.
I’ve said it time and time again. Back in the 80s and 90s, we never turned away a player based on gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, and so on. As long as you came to play the game and have fun, there was never a reason to close the doors. The gate was always open no matter what some Jason-come-lately might try to convince you otherwise. I have had players from all walks of life, almost every political view and religion imaginable, various BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, neurodiversity, and almost anything else one can think of. The only player who was asked to leave were the one who was very openly vocal skinhead Nazi and was making the rest of the table uncomfortable. (*He was subsequently ejected from the convention, too.)
None of WotC’s latest propaganda actually affects me, just their current game.
I wonder how many monsters in the new 2025 Monster Manual will be considered offensive and thusly rendered toothless, harmless, and nice by the new regime. We can’t have evil Orcs, Drow, Goblins, or anything else on two legs. I heard they’re removing alignments from monsters altogether, so maybe we’re all nicey-nice now. Baristas & Besties for the win again.
On a brighter note, I can look at my bookshelves where I already own several other versions of what D&D is effectively. There’s also my current favorite, Dragonbane, which came from the same era of gaming originally. That’s just fantasy games. Superhero gaming, horror, sci-fi, mecha, and post-apocalyptic genres are also genres widely unspoiled by Wizards of the Coast and what is obviously their socio-political agenda (for better or worse.)
As we say all the time, what works at my table might not work at yours and vice versa. Do what makes you and your group happy. If you love 2024 D&D and that’s what your group is into, great. If you love Dragonbane and want to hang out with me, great. No TTRPG should be used as a platform for racism, hate, or any other negative crap, though. That’s not why we’re here.
I want to revisit a talking point for just a moment.
Old D&D, that is to say before Wizards of the Coast ever got their poop claws on it, had it’s share of issues. Sure, there were value-derived conflicts in many of the modules. We had some real good vs evil stuff, and the lines of demarcation were pretty clear. THE PLAYER CHARACTERS WERE ALMOST ALWAYS CONSIDERED TO BE THE GOOD GUYS!!!
Back in the old days we played games that dealt with some pretty tough social issues. Our Player Characters fought against slavery, totalitarianism, racial biases, kidnapping, oppression, and all kinds of other evil concepts. We had plenty of lighthearted moments, too. Moments with no moral/ethical quandaries attached to them whatsoever. You know, fun?
Nowadays its apparently scary and unsafe to even mention anything that might remotely make one of the players uncomfortable. I’m serious when I say I think it has gotten completely out of hand. I get there’s a generational divide between us OGs (Old Gamers) and this newer D&D 5E generation, many of whom started with COVID quarantine.
I have a simple solution to WotC’s whole D&D problem.
I can scarcely believe no one has pointed this out to the higher ups at WotC or their Reptilian Overlords at Hasbro. The whole solution to the whole racism in D&D or any other problem stemming from the game’s controversial past or its old white guy creators is so simple. It’s staring the Gamer Architects (or whatever their titles are this week) right in the face and they won’t do it.
Ready? The writers at Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast need to scrap all their old setting and background content and start over from the ground up. Keep the name and the base rules (minus all the icky scary stuff) and create an all new game. They’ll never do it because it would require the one resource I don’t think they have- creativity.
Thanks, Shigloo, for the best meme ever.
Sadly, it’s easier for WotC to dredge up Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Planescape, and even Lord of the Rings from the annals of gaming history and decry all of the racism, conservatism, etc inherent to those older products than it is to just generate their own new material. My TTRPG family, it drives me up the frickin wall every time something like this comes up. At some point after 2014, the fine minds that wrote Dungeons & Dragons just plain forgot what it was like to be gamers.
Maybe it’s the need for sales or some other factor on a corporate level. D&D became a game about appealing to the broadest common denominator, political correctness, and kowtowing to any/all inclusivity readers associated with the product. I think WotC has forgotten the cash-paying portion of their audience almost entirely or they wouldn’t be crying “bigot” every time we turn around. It’s like they have no regard for the game’s past on D&D’s 50th Anniversary. It’s tragic, really.
If WotC wants a D&D game free from all the ickiness of the past, it’s simple. All they have to do is come up with their own non-Tolkienesque species, classes, settings, and monsters. Throw out all of D&D’s sordid past and never look back at it again. I think they’re too scared that it won’t sell which is why they won’t do the thing, but it’s exactly what they think their audience is clamoring for.
This is not an advertisement for better games.
A certain YouTube/X (Twitter) personality once told me that a lot of our anti-WotC/D&D rants just end up being promotional material for other games. I’m honestly not trying to push an anti-D&D agenda. Heck, I kinda like 5E for all of the awesome Third Party Product out there. 5E has been amazeballs at opening the floodgates for all kinds of unofficial content creation. Hooray for third party creativity!
Do I prefer plenty of other game systems for my fantasy TTRPGs? I certainly do. But in some ways, it’s still all D&D to me. I still pull out older resources including 5E when I need just a little creative nudge. Every edition of the game prior to 2024 is a treasure trove of neat ideas. Right now the biggest enemy to D&D is Wizards of the Coast. Thousands of fans would love to see the game make a positive resurgence.
If you really love what D&D has become and what WotC continues to do to the hobby, good for you. Keep on gaming. There is no wrong way to enjoy our hobby. There never has been. I honestly think the easiest way to improve D&D at this point is to start over on campaign worlds, species, monsters, etc. Inject creativity into the official rules and stop living off of past works. Then any mistakes made with the game do not rest on us OGs. It’s win-win. It might even drive sales up.
Final thoughts on the matter for today.
This is kind of the TLDR. I love you, fellow humans. Dungeons & Dragons has taken a major downturn under Wizards of the Coast’s leadership. The solution, not that they would ever listen to me, is to engage in their own creativity and stop dredging up issues and campaign settings from the past. If the old material offends their sensibilities so much, create all new material and don’t look back. Easy fix.
Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.
Jeff's Game Box 