From D&D and Pathfinder to Critical Role, cultural consultants have never been more important in the tabletop RPG industry
From D&D and Pathfinder to Critical Role, cultural consultants have never been more important in the tabletop RPG industry
“It's always been important to engage with this kind of work. It just wasn't done before.”
“The real solution on some level is to put people in the project management chair, as writing staff or in art director positions on these projects. It is to give opportunities and cash to the people who should be in charge here,” Ghouse says.
I just picked up and started reading "The Privilege of Play" by Aaron Trammell this week. It goes in-depth on the recent push of diversification in hobby gaming, and how the affluent Caucasian model train guys are the forefathers of our hobby and subsequently most of our connections to gaming come from a wealthy white dude lens.
It's a crunchy read, but as a game store owner I'm finding it valuable for challenging my assumptions so far.
If you're looking for more diverse viewpoints on the hobby I would suggest checking out a podcast titled Three Black Halflings. I first checked it out after they did an ad on NADDPOD (they've also done a couple guest appearances for things like DMing a one shot for a NADDPOD bonus episode) and I've found them to be both culturally informative as well as just entertaining to listen to. The name comes from a story about one of them noticing that they couldn't find a single piece of artwork in an official WotC sourcebook depicting a dark skinned halfling and that got them thinking about stuff like that. They don't just talk about diversity, representation, and stereotypes (which they frequently make a point to address) but they also just talk about tabletop gaming in general (mostly specific to D&D) from new releases, cool table stories, etc. I first gave them a try out of curiosity then kept listening because they're identifiable to me, a middle aged white dude, because they're fellow gamers who often think just like I do but also sometimes make me think twice about things I never bothered to pay attention to.
They do a weekly talk show style podcast where they might be discussing a new sourcebooks or UAs, any of the occasional controversies arising out of somebody at WotC doing something stupid, they could just discuss a certain aspect of the hobby they like, or a third party setting splatbook, or they might have a guest to talk about any and all of those things with. A lot of their guests are POCs but they also frequently have white people on to compare and contrast viewpoints (yes, hard to believe but actual open, honest, mutually non-judgemental and friendly conversation rather than people on any given news network breathing fire and brimstone at the people on other networks about the same general topics). The entire NADDPOD crew have all been guests (most of them multiple times) plus other big names in the liveplay scene like Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan (Brennan actually wore a "3BH" pin -which is their merch- on his shirt while DMing at least one episode of Critical Role's Exandria Unlimited Calamity arc, which came as a surprise to the 3BH cast). In addition to the talk show episodes they frequently record and release liveplay games ranging from one shots to 10-20 session long campaigns sometimes including guest players like Lou Wilson and Emily Axford.
Good stuff, just search for "Three Black Halflings" and it'll come right up. Pretty big archive, all free to download.
I'll add it to my list! Do they branch out from western fantasy at all? I usually run campaigns in different genres so I'm curious how relevant their discussions are to me.
They have a campaign or two in a setting that's basically a fantasy western but with a north African flavor added to it. So African cowboy druids are a thing that happens. Edit: There's also a train heist featuring Emily Axford playing a redneck mummy paladin. It's awesome. The campaign is called Outlaws and Obelisks, with eighteen episodes to it in total (IIRC they're about 2 hours each).