Welcome back everyone to our newest blog “D&D: Race Review #2!” Last week we looked at some aspects of dungeons and dragons, as well as what one interviewee had to say about the topic of races in the game, and how some of the situations made them somewhat uncomfortable. In today’s blog, we’ll dive into another interview and see some of the other aspects of race in the game, and other points of introspection. (Disclaimer: The interviewee in question is someone I’m currently in multiple campaigns with)

Something that came up a lot during our interview was this idea of really getting into character when playing D&D. Like an actor, the player should be able to get into the mindset of their character and think about what they in particular would do in the world around them. This idea can be lost on players, however, something our interviewee noted. For them, though, the idea of interacting with the world is a must. When playing in games, our interviewee liked to try and draw players into thinking about the world around them and their character motivations in different ways: “ Like I would ask them, pointedly, like, ‘Oh, what religion do you follow? What faith… how do you understand this fictional world that we exist in?’” The interviewee wouldn’t ask these questions as themselves, though. They asked these sorts of questions from their character’s perspective, to get them into the game more. In this particular instance, religion was one of the driving forces for their character, and they wanted to see how other characters would interact with this notion of religion. In D&D, religion and faith can sometimes be overlooked, considering there are numerous gods and goddesses that one can follow. In this line of questioning, the interviewee talked about how they can really get people to understand the world around them and get more invested in the story that they are a part of. Though, what did our interviewee have to say about evil races and the like?

Interestingly enough, the interviewee talked about how the monster races in D&D get their inspiration from other parts of the fantasy genre. The topic of orcs in particular took up a great deal of our conversation. We talked about where their origin might have come from, and landed on the author J.R.R. Tolkien, the creator of the acclaimed Lord of The Rings series. Within the books, orcs were created for the sole purpose of evil and carrying out the plans of the main villain. Some of these ideas, then, could have bled into this tabletop game, and the preconceived notion of them being evil continued to live on. Though, the idea of orcs being evil goes back even further than Tolkien:  “When you go into Greek mythology and Roman mythology and Nordic mythology, you know, this is the stuff that they have written down. And so it’s widely understood, that orcs are evil, and that they are created out of hate and the dark side of the gods…” These inspirations for orcs, then, was probably what drove Tolkien to write orcs in the way he did. This, in turn, bled into dungeons and dragons, where the idea of evil orcs was sustained. It was certainly interesting to see how that idea traveled throughout the years into the game we play now. This could explain why other races are found to be evil as well. Though, even some of the player races, such as tieflings and dragonborn, could be considered evil as well.

In one of the games that me and the interviewee played in together, I decided to take on the role of a dragonborn fighter, something that stood out from the other humanoid characters in our party (5 in total). In this game, the interviewee was the dungeon master, so they were leading us all in a story. What I didn’t know at the time was that the world we were playing in had been ravaged by dragon-kind for centuries, to the point where people didn’t want anything to do with dragons of any kind. It was a surprise, then, when my character had an interaction with a blacksmith in town, where my character asked what kind of wares they had for sale. The blacksmith refused to do business with my character and asked them many times to leave, until my character eventually did. Why might this story be important, one might ask? Well, while I didn’t notice or realize at first, our interviewee talked about how they almost immediately picked up on what was happening during this whole interaction. Outside the game, at the table we were at, they realized that this interaction, in real life, was taking place between a white person and a black person. They realized that this situation was something that I could have potentially gone through in my lifetime, and, had we not been friends, the interaction could have gone south extremely fast. Luckily for us, nothing came up because of this, but it certainly left an impression on us to think about. As my interviewee said, “You realize that that’s real life. That’s like… That’s how people live. Sometimes you walk into a neighborhood and you’re a person of color, or you walk into a neighborhood and you’re a transgender person, or something of that nature, you know, and people are going to be like, ‘What are they doing here?’” These moments that make us think, that make us have a moment of introspection, is something that brings D&D almost to life. It has the potential to make you think more about the world around you and how you interact with others. Though, this moment wouldn’t have happened without the interviewee bringing up this potential situation. Anything like this is up to the dungeon master to decide on. Without their direction, and without them wanting to bring up more thought provoking ideas, there might not be as much introspection as you might expect. There won’t be a good take-away without the dungeon master presenting one.

The idea of taking a deeper look into the world around you, of interacting with the different portions of dungeons and dragons you might not have before, can certainly build up more understanding of the world around you. This is a topic we’ll continue into in “D&D: Race Review #3.”