Inclusive game worlds make for inclusive gaming

One thing my parents got right, for which I remain grateful, was that they explicitly taught me and my siblings that a person’s worth has nothing to do with skin color or ancestral origin. This mattered. When I was a kid, in the 70s and 80s, the people of my town were almost entirely white. To her credit, my mother encouraged me to befriend the new non-white kids whose families moved into the area in a trickle, without mentioning anything about their not being white. In hindsight, now as a father, I see what she did.

The one African-American boy I knew, James, was like my other friends in the 80s. He liked fantasy, sci-fi, and games. When Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay came out in 1986, James and I started a Warhammer game. He made a character. When I asked him to describe the character, he said, “He looks like me.” I asked him what he meant, and he said “black.”

I paused. Two irrelevant and stupid hangups came to mind. First, I usually encouraged players to take characters that were not transparent alter-egos of their real selves. This made it less painful when they got invested in a character who then died in the game. I foolishly thought that his playing a black character would be too close to his real self, whereas I never thought that about my white players. Second, as a teen, I was interested in “authenticity.” The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game was set in an alternate world in a place reminiscent of sixteenth-century Germany. The game was illustrated luxuriously with vivid, wicked, baroque black-and-white images of a “grim world of perilous adventure” that was unmistakably European. I told James that there were probably very few black people in the main setting of this game. He insisted that his character was black, and I foolishly argued with him about “getting the setting right.”

A few years before, when we became friends, James had confided in me about the outright persecution he and his family had experienced in his previous home. People had treated him with horrifying racist hostility. Once, someone even had thrown a brick at him. I remember feeling confused grief about it when he told me. I had blinked back tears just hearing about it. I couldn’t believe it, and it made no sense to me, but James wasn’t making it up. It was real.

With these experiences, James absolutely did not need to hear me tell him how his Warhammer character would stand out too much in a fantasy version of late medieval Germany. James was living this already. After a minute or two, I realized that what I was saying was wrong and I felt bad because of what it must have meant to him. I said, “Okay, James. Your character can look like whatever you want.” But I had dampened the spirit of character creation by arguing with him about his character’s skin color. The game didn’t go far.

In hindsight, I see not just how insensitive, but how stupid my argument was. The world of Warhammer is full of bizarre creatures that have nothing to do with sixteenth-century Germany. The characters can travel to distant lands and participate in fantastic events bearing no “European” character. My effort to capture an “authentic” historical atmosphere was misplaced. As a consequence, for the first time, my friend’s skin color had mattered overtly in our relationship. I felt bad and he must have felt worse.

Fantasy game worlds do not have to replicate real-world racism to be “authentic.” In a fantasy, authentic is whatever we say it is.

Decades later: my wife is making her first D&D character so she can play with our kids. She leaves it unfinished. That night, as we are going to bed, she says, “I’m not sure if my warrior should be female. I just don’t know how I’m going to deal with the sexism in a medieval-style world. I don’t want to have to prove myself constantly.”

This time, I gave a better answer. “Make your character however you want,” I said. “This is a fantasy world. I have decided that women in this world have equal status with men, generally. Anyway, sexism is not fun. The game is supposed to be fun. So don’t worry about that stuff. Your character won’t encounter men in charge who question her status as a female warrior. There are lots of female warriors like her.”

My wife smiled, nodded, and looked me in the eye. “Yes. Sexism is not fun.” She took on the role of her woman warrior with gusto.

Imagining a fantasy that mirrors real-world racism and sexism might be fun, if your players find that fun. But do they? If there are monsters and aliens to contend with in your game, you have already left “authentic” behind. There will be plenty of imaginary social conflicts in your game, but you lose nothing in creating a fantasy world in which racism and sexism do not mirror the painful problems that real-world players experience all the time. After all, your imagination exists in the real world.

Your imagination can welcome players or turn them away. Ultimately, inclusive game worlds make the hobby more fun for more people.