D&D is Colonialist and You Don't Need to Care

Gaming, tabletop or otherwise, is a relatively young mass medium. Sure games have existed pretty much forever but in the same way that the printing press changed story telling, games publishing has changed games. This means that any sort of elevated analysis is also young. We are still having conversations about whether games are art which is the analytical equivalent of banging rocks together. It’s into this world the Quinns dropped his review of Stonetop¹.

For those not up on the controversy, Quinns said some pretty inflammatory stuff about the 3 biggest TTRPGs around; D&D, Pathfinder and Draw Steel. Without quoting exactly (because I am a lazy blogger and not a journalist) he implied that these games focus on combat and player empowerment presents a thoughtless and violent power fantasy. He even went so far as to call these games artless. The controversy is obvious, Quinns was mean. That, however, doesn’t mean he was wrong. In fact, everything Quinns said is entirely correct, from his lens.

So now it’s time for the talk your English lit teacher should of had with you in high school. What you get out of art is highly dependant on your personal lens. Everything that makes you a unique special little snow flake affects what you get out of art. It’s why one person can watch Black Panther and see an empowering superhero epic, whilst my engineer brain keeps trying to work out how the fuck Wakanda is supposed to function as a country². One is seeing the setting as fanciful set dressing (as the director likely intended), the other can’t turn off their systems brain long enough to enjoy two guys dressed as big cats punching each other.

Looking at Quinns’ lens, it’s pretty obvious how he would come to these conclusions about the big three. He is interested in themes, those games are interested in being tool-kits for power fantasy adventure. He’s there for the art, they’re there for the craft of game design³. Not that these things are mutually exclusive but they are different focuses. From that lens of course he is right, there is no central theme to the kitchen sink fantasy of the big three. That shit is up to the game master rather than part of the system like Stonetop.

Another criticism caught up in all this is that D&D and its children are colonialist. Proponents of this reading are correct, as are the opponents of this reading. It’s a lens, a way to look at the game not a declarative truth. Rather than a condemnation it is an opportunity to look at D&D with new eyes, even if only for a moment. Do you treat NPCs, especially enemies, as disposable set dressing? What does it say about you and your games? Does this need to change or should it stay the same? It’s not a moral challenge but rather an opportunity to elevate.

I really do mean that you don’t need to change your game to suit these kind of analyses. For one the colonialism lens presupposes you are treating creatures like goblins as a species rather than Tolkien’s embodiment of human evil. Encountering and dealing with pure evil is thematically rich if you are aware of it and do it on purpose. In this way embracing Tolkien’s version of goblins is a valid response to the questions that the colonialism lens brings, whilst simultaneously rejecting that lens. Even then, the lens itself brought you to think more deeply.

Good art criticism, like good art is an invitation to think⁴. To look at things with new eyes. In this sense, the Quinns Quest review of Stonetop is great art criticism. The adverse reaction to it is more a function of illiteracy, and the inability to entertain contrary opinions that comes with it, in games as a whole. Did Quinns state his opinion in a fairly aggressive way? Sure, but it is good writing. Let a fella have an opinion without having to drench it in caveats.

1. Quinns Quest Reviews: Stonetop! ↩︎

2. Don’t get me wrong, I like the visuals it’s just the world building left so many important questions unanswered that would have been more interesting than retelling Hamlet again. ↩︎

3. I want to talk about the art/craft distinction at some point because I think it is important to games specifically. A lot of talking past each other is done due to not understanding this distinction. ↩︎

4. Like the bullets vs prose debate that I have posted about previously. ↩︎