Geeks On Diversity

I browsed on Amazon, thanks to an FB ad-so I’m sure I’m getting a thousand more similar ads-for 5th E DND Candlekeep Mysteries. It’s a book of several quick mystery scenarios that can be dropped into any existing campaign. Fair enough. I often look to the comments to get a baseline idea of the quality of the product. Of course, that was a mistake.

The mistake was getting down into a morass of the worst of nerd-kind going off about “woke” stuff. There is a debate to be had about diversity vs gimmicks. Unfortunately, you can’t have that conversation anymore as you are immediately drowned out by the cries of being a nazi on one side and the other side proving at the top of their voice that they are indeed nazis. The worst of the full-on nerd, anti woke nazis actually make the point for the woke folk in their barely disguised misogyny, homophobia, and hate for anything other than their own personal white status quo. They are often the loudest and vilest voices in the discussion, and I would take up any side of the argument that wasn’t their side of the argument.

The problem here is us old-school geeks, (as opposed to these vile nerds - and yes there is a distinction), can sniff the shit smell coming from gimmicks in geek media from miles and miles away. We’ve been through all the major comic book deaths that were FOR REAL! and FOR PERMANENT! only to have enough issues go by for a trade, and the character is then magically back from the dead. There are movies to be made after all… and the character can’t be dead. There are stockholders to think about… and the character can’t be dead. We’ve got to pop sales this year… and the character can’t be dead. Captain America, Superman, Batman, all these and more have died FOR REALS and have magically bounced back healthy and hearty, and returned promptly, no muss-no fuss, to the status quo.

Every time there is a change in the creative team, you get one of two discussions about their run on the book:

1) We’re gonna really shake it up and take this character to new places, give him some real trials to work through that will CHANGE THE CHARACTER FOREVER!

or

2) We’re gonna take this character back to its roots, and make the character what fans loved about them from the start. Streamline the character, make them FUN AGAIN! Return them no muss-no fuss back to the status quo.

The real geeks out there know the gimmicks, we know the flow of books to the shelves, we know the old carny mentality of comic books being if 1 works 100 more pumped out until its beat to absolute death will work even better! We’ve seen how Marvel literally pushed out a ton of trash limited series just to drive DC and indie books physically off the shelves.

“It’s mutants… I gotta have a complete collection even if I hate it now… just saying…”

So when a gimmick hits we will call bs. In today’s world of woke, that immediately gets shouted down as nazi talk. Captain America is Hydra - gimmick. Death of any major flagship character - gimmick. Stretching stories from a couple of issue to six to make a graphic novel - gimmick. The Phoenix Saga in any form or fashion - gimmick. 20 Avengers and X-Men titles on the rack all at once - gimmick. The very nature of cliffhanger comic book storytelling - gimmick.

When we see flagship characters fundamentally changed - gender or race or both - for six months and then go back to ‘all is normal’ in time for the next film to release, we know it for what it is - a gimmick. It is fair to call comics, movies, games, novels on their gimmicks. Gimmicks are lazy storytelling. There is a discussion to be had on why aren’t new characters created that are diverse? Why change long-standing characters out of the blue. This is all cynical carny marketing. It’s also knowing that any of the tent pole characters created before 1970 are the only things making them money. There are very few original tent pole characters that were created after 1970. These characters can’t be fundamentally changed because the original white male characters are what drives their bus.

So when we see these cosmetic temporary changes to characters, our cries of woe aren’t about hating or not wanting diversity, it’s about rolling our eyes at seeing yet another gimmick. You shoved the Guardians of the Galaxy right up people’s noses and had a hit. Do that with similar diverse and weird ORIGINAL/BRAND NEW characters by equally weird and diverse creators and, hey, you got a shot of getting us on board. DC’s Vertigo line often featured the weird and diverse and those books were often celebrated for their nonstandard qualities. Neil Gaiman and his characters became legendary off that comic book line.

The good geeks welcome diversity. We want to see heroes and situations from our backgrounds. Be it the diverse array of patients on the Good Doctor to the power women on the Mandalorian to the quirky flakes on the Magicians, it’s all good. What we don’t like, and want to be able to comment on, is when it feels like it’s just a nobody robot dressed up in diverse drag, trotted out to the spotlight to be the diversity of the week. That sucks. Good writing is good writing and bad writing is bad writing and we should be able to comment on it.

In the case of the Candlekeep Mysteries, the problem comes in the push for wokeness to the point of changing the parameters of the game. DND is a game about a table of players coming to a consensus about the nature of the game they want to play for maximum fun utilizing the tools presented of balanced, unique races and balanced, unique class/job roles for their characters to assume. If you keep changing the game to where a 3’ foot hobbit is equal for all intents and purposes to 7’ 500lb dragon-kin character, you’re moving away from a core roleplaying ideal of the game. When anyone can do any magic, and anyone can be Conan or both at the same time, then that unique hero quality is lost from the game. When you change definitions of words like ‘paladin’ so anything can be a paladin for any type of philosophy, then you’re losing the core nature of DND.

The game balance of characters and their skills may not have a logical sense in the real world, but that’s okay - it’s not the real world, it’s a game. If anyone can be anything then you’re taking away the ability to be unique and be the one right hero for this mission. The parameters are to have a table of unique player creations that all get to have a spotlight on being the hero. It’s not about giving identical robots participation trophies. With that said, the best tools for DND are those that allow you to adapt them to your table. Some only want diverse roleplaying with happy squee moments. Some only want the grid on the table and miniatures and tactics. Most want some of both. The best tools are adaptable to any of them.

Most DND tools are half-assed money grubs. Old school geeks know this and need to be able to call it out. If I gotta keep track of all the NPCs gender because DND is now too woke to assign a gender to a FICTIONAL NPC, then I’m not gonna buy it anyway. Because I’m a hater? No, because I got better things to do as a Game Master. A realized world is one of ever-changing race conflict, gender conflict, political and religious conflict. Give me those tools and I’ll adapt them to my world. And yes, my world is better than anything they’ve published, so when I look for a tool that’s worth bringing into my game, it will be retooled to come into alignment with a better system - my own.

The only indications of wokeness need to come in the Game Master Guide to the system as part of how to run a game for beginners. Not to start with full-on diverse woke content, but to discuss among your players - particularly if they are new - what do they expect out of a game, what goes too far, do they expect a certain level of diversity, what types of characters would they like to play and to interact with, is this table about roleplaying or is it about tactics etc. That's where woke comes in - to make sure you're allowing everyone to participate fully for maximum enjoyment and be able to opt-out if it seems like it’s not a good fit.

In my game, people discover quickly the differences between the types of elves. if they have regular interaction with a city enclave of dwarves and expect that same interaction when they go into a mountain hall of dwarves, they will be rudely awakened to the differences. Some of this comes about from the current players bringing their creativity and improvisation to the situation. I don’t have to make sure every innkeeper is a lesbian transgender dwarf because the world is living and breathing and depending on the city in question, the people running the shops are there for very specific cultural, racial, political, and religious reasons - not because I’m putting a gimmick in place to virtue signal.

Is it good to foster diversity in geekdom - yes absolutely, but don’t insult us by representing us as a gimmick. We’ve been token far too long.