More Vacuous and Empty Than Wildspace…
And then they handwave the whole thing with “50 years ago everything was racist”. And while that is absolutely true, that does not excuse literally creating the most horrendously ignorant and maliciously racist content for the poor hadozee in all those 50 years. There isn’t an award for “Overtaking Racist Lore from 50 Years Ago”; that is a stain that no hand-wavey errata document can paint over. Heck, the errata is more concerned with adjusting the freaking Glide mechanic and adjustments to Challenge Rating rather than admitting “we f*cked up and there’s no excuse”.
That content is still out there. Someone paid for the privilege of having the trauma of their culture and history thrown through the stained glass of their heart when all they wanted was to read about ttrpg options. Someone read this and saw the happy slave stereotype was reborn in 2022, and that faith in d&d is never coming back once its gone. And some all-lives-matter bootlickers out there are already calling the whole thing kowtowing to faceless internet snowflakes because they can’t accept their favorite game is racist and they should empathize with those hurt by it.
Future versions of the print Astral Adventurer’s Guide are going to be revised apparently, and the current digital version is revised as well. Doesn’t change the fact that there are people who paid for and now hold those original digital copies, racist lore and all. Doesn’t change that the Guide coming to local game store shelves near you are going to contain that horrendous racist lore. And in the next ten years, what with D&DOne coming in the near future, all the 5e players are going to share digital copies with all the internet, racist lore included like a timecapsule bomb. (All d&d content does that, there are scans from every magazine and book out there from 1st to 3.5/4th)
Good job on pulling the copies to stop the flow of your content’s corrosive vitriol, Wizards. I’m sure it gave your company’s near-monopolized flow of ttrpg fan money a heartstopping five minute pause as you edited out the offensive content and put it back up for full price. I’m sure glad you are “eternally grateful for the ongoing dialog with the D&D community”; this was just a friendly dialog and not a horrendous oversight by entire departments of people, starting from the writers room and going all the way through to print… You tainted one of your game’s most beloved campaign settings through your negligence and ignorance and very likely malevolence as well. Way to make it all about your company “making a mistake” and to “[committing] to making D&D as welcome and inclusive as possible” because “this part of [your] work will never end”.
Your apology and response are as vacuous and breathless as Wildspace, Wizards of the Coast. So glad you’re covering your ass because no one thought to give Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford (the writers with their freaking names on the product) a smack upside the head for mistakenly or maliciously leading your company team to recreate the most denigrating stereotypes of American slavery in Dungeons & freaking Dragons. Your zip-zappy scifi-fantasy campaign setting–one so beloved by the community that entire fan forums and websites were made when 3.5 never got their official version–has exploded before leaving the atmosphere. All because none of you looked over its content for the racist nuke in your cargo. You just banked on “it’s d&d, it’s practically printing money because geeks have cash to burn” to just skirt on by with simple patch-errata pdfs in case of bumpy flight…
That is all I have to say at this time.
With love and support and hope to those affected by this fiasco of incredible ignorance,
Aboleth-Eye, signing off. 9/2/22
