Popular Board Game Enforces Woke New Rules For Players

Another cultural icon has been pulled into the swirling debate over identity politics and safe spaces, this time in a corner of America’s comic book stores where least suspected.

Players of “Dungeons & Dragons,” the widely popular board game that launched in 1974, are now being instructed to eliminate the races of elves and gendering of witches during competitive play, according to the New York Times. The changes have rocked an insular community unused to meddling by the wider world, but the publisher for D&D has said that the changes were inevitable in the face of public pressure — and plummeting sales.

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In the game, players rely on mythical characters like elves, orcs, and halflings, all of which carry innate personal strengths and weaknesses that must now be downplayed in tournaments. The “races” of certain characters are now referred to as “species,” while a mountain elf, described on game cards as rugged and durable, has lost those adjectives. Similarly, high elves may no longer be credited with their definitional intelligence and dexterity. Wizards of the Coast, the Dungeons & Dragons publisher owned by Hasbro, has endorsed allowing players to halt competitive games if they feel uncomfortable.

“What they’re trying to do here is put up a signal flare, to not only current players but potential future players, that this game is a safe, inclusive, thoughtful and sensitive approach to fantasy storytelling,” said Ryan Lessard, a writer and frequent Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master, told the Times.

Dungeons And Dragons Introduces New 100-Sided Die For Determining Your Character's Genderhttps://t.co/ISgylXXgVh

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) November 30, 2024

The changes come as “Dungeons & Dragons” opens itself to new legions of fans after decades in the dusty corners of malls, schools, or comic book stores where its stereotypical fan base kept to itself. Now, an exploding new interest in the popular board game is forcing Hasbro and its subsidiaries to reflect on whether the largely male culture of D&D is inclusive enough to broaden its appeal. Longtime players are seething, and a rift in the tight-knit community has burst into the open.

Robert J. Kuntz, an award-winning game designer and collaborator with some of D&D’s original creators, criticized the new rules instructing players to ignore which race some of the game’s characters may be. “It’s an unnecessary thing,” he said. “It attempts to play into something that I’m not sure is even worthy of addressing, as if the word ‘race’ is bad.”

In 2008, “Dungeons & Dragons” received a tepid response to its fourth edition, and it arrived years before the onset of nerd coolness popularized by shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and “Stranger Things,” whose characters frequently use D&D slang. “The D&D audience was shrinking,” said Jeremy Crawford, the game’s lead rules designer. He added, “The game was becoming so tailored to just one way of playing that it was not feeling as inviting as we knew the game could be.”

Today, the “2024 Player’s Handbook” is among the best-selling editions put out by Wizards of the Coast, who said players have increased their calls for more diversity, equity, and inclusion in their ability to select and tailor characters to their needs. “People really wanted to be able to mix and match their species choice with their character-class choice,” Crawford said, adding, “They didn’t want choosing a dwarf to make them a lesser wizard.”

Other players frustrated by the changes say the innate qualities of each character helped them shine during gameplay. “All the species are becoming humans with decorations,” lamented Devin Cutler, a veteran gamer from Manchester, New Hampshire.

Crawford said the new rules have been in development for the past two years, as players were invited to test how they would impact the competitiveness of certain characters. In 2022, the official website for the game was updated with a message from “DND Staff” that read, “We understand ‘race’ is a problematic term that has had prejudiced links between real-world people and the fantasy peoples of D&D worlds.”

In response to the news, Elon Musk posted on X, “How much is Hasbro?”

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