Beyond Solitaire Podcast 241: Aaron Trammell on how D&D Changed the Way We Play
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Transcript
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Hey gamers, it's time for a quick word from our sponsor. Uh, I am proud to announce that the Beyond Solitire podcast is sponsored by Central Michigan University Center for Learning Through Games and Simulations. Their most recent project, The Blue Way by Jason Morning Star, is currently up for pre-order, and it is an amazing RPG about oppression and identity. So, you should check it out. But for now, let's get on with the show. Hey gamers, this is Liz Davidson from Beyond Solitire. And this week on the pod, the intro to season 13, in fact, uh I have a returning favorite guest. Uh this is Aaron Trel. He's a professor of informatics at UC Irvine. How you doing today, Erin?
I'm doing great, Liz. It's great to see you. Always a pleasure to be here.
And also 13 is my lucky number. Uh so I'll take it.
Perfect. Yes, I like a good lucky 13. Uh but um
just I just have to say this. I um I was at the carnival when I was a kid at the boardwalk and there was a wheel where you could bet and win cassette tapes and I bet um I think it was like $2 on 13 and I got both RM's Murmur on cassette and the best of Queen on cassette and both of those albums were like kind of life-changing. So um it it will always be my lucky number.
Oh man, lucky indeed. I just always think of HBO's Rome 13. Um, so the last time I had you on the show was to talk about The Privilege of Play, which is your previous book. Um, but you are a man of constant labors and so now we have another book out to talk about and I'm excited about it. Uh, so I've got this advanced copy of How Dungeons and Dragons Changed the Way We Play.
It's crazy to see you holding that. I actually don't have a copy of it yet. So it's like, wow. Other people, it's out in the world. um and not in my hand. So, uh wild.
Yes. And this is one of those like it's a it's got a uncorrected page proof warning in the front and like the table of contents isn't filled in. It's great. I might actually just bring it to Jen Con and have you autograph it for funsies, but um so for people who are learning about this book for the first time, it's going to be out in September. Um what is the premise of this book and what drove you to write it?
Yeah. Um uh the first first part of that question is an easy one to answer. The second one I've got a fun story, but it'll it'll take a little bit of time. Um so, um the premise of this book is that Dungeons and Dragons was one of the very most impactful games that's ever been made. Um and I want to to tell the story of the ways that Dungeons and Dragons have kind of encouraged um what I would describe as an almost myopic sense of design, which is very much by the numbers. Um, so one of the things that Dungeons and Dragons is celebrated for is role- playinging, uh, that people get to, you know, put on their hat, their cloak, and and play a character. Um, that is not the story that's in this book. There's lots of other good work that's been on how Dungeons and Dragons is a great role playing game. I've also written a book on play called Repairing Play that really gets into my thoughts on the aspects of role playing that are there. Um, this is not that book. This book is all about the crunchy and quantitative aspects of Dungeons and Dragons and how they inspired a generation of digital game designers to make crunchy quantitative games for computers and some of the cultural problems with those designs moving forward. And so it's really kind of trying to tackle that moment of quantification and classification that happens in game design and ask ourselves questions about um what that has yielded culturally both in digital games but also in our culture as a whole.
Nice. All right. And then I want your long story.
All right. Yeah. Um, so the other part of the story is that um, uh, uh, if you're a Magic the Gathering player, you will be familiar with the phrase last in first out. Um, meaning uh, the things that the cards you play in the table last are the ones that take effect first. Um, at least that used to be a rule of magic. Um, and uh, so I've written now three books and this was actually the very first book I wrote. Uh but for a number of reasons it wound up getting delayed and delayed and revised and delayed and revised and delayed. And so actually um this uh is in this weird place where it's some of my earliest writing, but also I've put kind of uh some grown-up sensibility around the editing to it and really tried to make the the pros as tight as I could within it. Um, so I don't know if this is a book I would still write again today if you just like gave me said like what book do you want to write? But it is a book I I really did write about 10 years ago and I've been kind of working on for 10 years. So um I would say in terms of like my career as a critic of games and a thinker around game design, um this is some of my earliest thoughts on those topics. Um and so there's some very raw stuff in there. Um and um there's some stuff that I hope comes together well um but might have come together in the other two books I've written a little better um after I was a little more experienced as a writer. So um so yeah uh that I think is the interesting story behind it is that this is some very
early writing that's just constantly been kind of getting iterated and put through um the developmental uh mill to to come up with a book. Um, then the other thing I would say is that it's a book on Dungeons and Dragons. And Dungeons and Dragons, um, you probably know as a viewer is an enormously popular IP. And so, um, I I do have some cold feet that or some anxiety that, uh, this is going to be a book that is read more than my other books. So, um, it's not only some of my most early and vulnerable writing, but it's probably going to reach a larger audience than some of the other writing I've done. So, um, I have a lot of feelings about the book in a lot of ways. I mean, I think it's good that if a book makes you feel something, so no problem.
Yeah, art art should make you feel, right?
Absolutely. Uh, so there was actually I there's so much in this book I had not known before I read it. Um, so that I mean starting with just chapter 2, like where the from where do dungeons come? Um, so I did not realize that this idea of kind of dungeons and dungeon crawling was associated with the Cold War.
Yeah. Um, well, I think it is. Uh right because you you get Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons is a game that gets developed in the 70s. Um and I you know like uh 70s to 80s kind of becomes this kind of peak cold war moment where um people have a lot of anxieties about um these two superpowers duking it out. Um and then you know like today with stoicism where men have a lot of anxiety on these topics and they're looking for outlets and ways to feel comfortable about that. Uh today it's often turning to the philosophy of the stoics. Um back in the 70s uh in some ways I think it was turning to the basement, turning inward, turning to the domestic spaces that they could hollow out in their own homes um to play games and uh kind of find ways to uh retreat into the life of the mind. um uh to enjoy games. And so um so I you know in this book I argue that I think that there is this uh this through thread of cold war anxieties that kind of paradoxically take us into the dungeon which you know like if you're if you told a kid like do you want to go into the dungeon now? They'd be like no that's a scary place. But actually I think for a lot of grown men uh playing Dungeons and Dragons in the 70s and 80s it was a really comforting place because it was this place of the mind and fantasy. And I think um Dungeons and Dragons was a a game that kind of led them there and uh gave them the opportunity to to think through these anxieties in a different way and to think about their community in a
different way.
Well, what's so crazy about this is that this is, you know, you just realize every so often that you you've just been living with assumptions that you've never questioned. Uh and so like, you know, people say dungeon crawler, and I've always just thought that was like a perfectly normal thing that you just go crawl a dungeon and like there's some treasure in there. I never questioned it. I never wondered like why would you do that instead of storming a castle um or like taking over a village. Um so like what is the earliest example of a dungeon crawl? Is it D and D or were there like proto dungeon crawls?
Oh wow, that's such a good question. Um yeah, I you know um uh it's interesting because a lot of there there's a lot of people who write about um the history of Dungeons and Dragons and um the other games that kind of went in to the game like John Peterson has written many books on the topic. Um and uh and you know a lot of it goes back to wargaming communities and um these sort of playby-male um uh gaming communities that were really thriving and alive in the 60s and 70s. Um but a lot of those war games were not really taking place in dungeons. Um uh they were taking place on battlefields. And so you have this kind of moment with uh the game before Dungeons and Dragons which was called Chain Mail which Gary Gyax um was also a designer for. Um, and in Chain Mail, uh, you have this kind of moment of moving from the war game, uh, where you have this sort of abstracted, uh, representation of troops on a battlefield, um, to a more heroic kind of sort of war game where it's a takes place in a fantasy almost Tolken world, Tolken-esque world, but b, not only does it take place in a a space of fantasy, you have these things that would be described as heroes in the game. Um and um these were, you know, just big characters. And so, uh characters that might not just die uh instantly if they went into a a melee with a bunch of
troops. Um and so Chain Mail is this game where you get this sort of abstraction of the troop level into the person level. Um uh and then there's this twist that happens um around this game called Escape from Castle Blackmore, which was kind of a modification of Chain Mail. Um where not only did you have these people on the courtyard of these battlefields, but these people suddenly had players role-playing each uh each person. Um and um that is kind of the origin story of Dungeons and Dragons where you went into the first person. Suddenly someone was inhabiting a body, not just commanding many bodies on the battlefield. And you know these uh these characters were escaping from this castle. And at that moment when it's like first person you're in a castle and you're escaping, I'd call that a dungeon crawl. Um uh I don't know if it's technically in a dungeon that they escaped through, but I would call that a dungeon crawl because uh you're doing all the things that you'd get in a dungeon crawl. So, I think within kind of the the folks who look at the history of these things, that's probably the first dungeon crawl.
But, you know, this is such a complicated space and there's so many different hobby games out there that also if there's somebody listening to this podcast and like you invented a game that an earlier dungeon crawl or you played a game that an earlier dungeon crawl, I really wouldn't be surprised. Um, and that that's the fun thing about history is that we're always learning stuff and um, we have these stories in our heads and they ought to be challenged because there's always information in the world that helps us re-evaluate and understand things from a new angle.
Yeah, I kind of want to like know this now. So, speaking of being a historian about D and D, um, I feel like this is just sort of an interesting question in general always, which is like how are you choosing and gathering your sources? cuz I feel like if it's a book like it goes in Library of Congress and you know there's going to be a library that has it somewhere probably you can get through ill but you've clearly collected a lot of early D and D materials for this book and there's some really cool like printouts of charts you've been looking at fan zenes um how do you get access to those materials and how are they currently being made available or not to other researchers?
Yeah um that's a great question. Um uh there's some ethics to this question also and I I'll put the ethical stuff at the end so we can kind of just go through the how to gather stuff first. Um so um so my uh my mentor when I was at um a grad student um uh was a woman named Maria Delbelloo and um she is a book historian. So she does work on um almanacs uh in 19th actually I think before the 19th century but she does work on almanacs in um Europe. Um and she looks you know in detail at the almanacs and uh basically tries to understand like how um uh these things move through time. Uh you know you can learn how to date them and stuff like that but you can also learn culturally how they're situated in a period a lot by actually looking at the materiality of that. Um, and so that's kind of like how I got some historical training. But one of the important things that she imparted to me was like you have to go to the archive. Go to the archive, get your hands dirty, see what you find. And um and there's a there's a famous academic who wrote once wrote an essay called uh his name was Jacques Dereda and wrote an essay called archive fever which was about how when you start looking into an archive you basically get into this place of your mind where you just kind of want to keep going and going and going because you're always trying to turn the page and find the next thing. Uh and so going into the archive is very much like that. There's a mo it's kind of a magical moment.
you'll go in and you'll be like, "Well, they just have one thing there." And then at the end of like two weeks time, you're like, "Oh, but I could find one more thing there." And so, um, so it's kind of exciting in that way. Um, so anyways, um, I starting at zero materials, um, I wanted to find fanzines on Dungeons and Dragons. And so I was conscientiously googling um what academic libraries had um fzine archives and do they have any material in the Dungeons and Dragons era. And I lived in New Jersey at the time. The closest one to me was in Bowling Green, Ohio at Bowling Green University. And I happened to have a friend there who said I could crash. She lived on a farm. She was like, "You can stay in our guest room." And so um I stayed in a farm five miles outside of town. Sometimes I would literally bike into the town and go into the archive and then I'd come back and feed the goats and it was actually kind of fun for two weeks. Um, and I made photo copies of a ton of fans there. Um, and so that's uh I think one of the first uh steps to to finding this material is I was just looking for anything they had in Dungeons and Dragons and I' I'd take photo copies of it. Um, that wasn't enough. I think that was enough to kind of get me situated within some of the fan communities um uh stuff, but I I definitely looked for more. Uh there was a uh a set of files that um I acquired online um that was a copy of
every um Dragon magazine ever ever written. Um, so that that was really helpful and I had read Dragon as a child, so I knew that this was like an important um kind of repository of information about TSR hobbies and Dungeons and Dragons. Uh, so that was all uh material that kind of helped me. So I used that that was kind of like collected materials and then like through going through this material also through reading some secondary sources like John Peterson's playing at the world um about 10 years ago actually like maybe 15 years ago now that I'm saying it out loud um uh I was also able to think about some key people like Lee Gold um who wrote uh who made the first Dungeons and Dragons fzine alarms and excursions and was also a woman operating in that space and um was fortunate to go visit her at her house in um LA because I lived at LA when I did my posttock so I was like kind of her neighbor so it was easy to get over there and look at the materials and um and yeah so that's how the story goes and then just bit by bit um adding uh stuff to those archives um became really really paramount uh adding archives to this as I I moved through and started seeking out more information became paramount um to to this project. Now I hinted at the beginning that there's some ethical things and um that's because I believe that information should be free and archive information should be free that um uh we live in a society um that has many uh agents and stakeholders in it um actually who are
actively trying to make information less free right now. And so I think when historical materials are available to many people, we get better history. Not because we get the stories we want to hear, actually because we get the stories we don't want to hear. Um, and so, uh, I think that helps us actually get a more, um, nuanced and complex version of history. And together all these stories, myself as a historian, John Peterson is a historian, Ben Riggs is a historian, and many many many other people who write on the same topic, we all weave this tapestry. And that tapestry is actually what I would describe as history, not anyone's story that's happening there. And so I think um the more that information is free, the more people um take the archives that they have um donate them to public institutions uh like the Strong Museum of Play is a great one to donate to. um I think the better um our collective knowledge can be on any given topic.
And then amen to that.
And then I'll just say um if you're a listener and you're like I'd love to write history like all these places, all these libraries like Bowling Green State University is a state university in Ohio. You know, I just called them and I I went to the archive. It wasn't like there's an admission fee or a lengthy application process. They make these materials free to anybody who wants to do history. So really just you send an email to the archist say I'd like to come by and what dates are good and they'll find time for you. Librarians love to share the materials they work with. That that is a fact about librarians.
Yes. And thank goodness for them.
Yeah. Um so a lot of the research that went into this book uh is very much focused on the statistics and quantitative you know aspects of character design in D and D. So what attracted you to this particular topic and for people who haven't played D and D or it's been a while like what is like a rundown of what we mean so as we continue to talk about this people will know what we're talking about?
Yeah great great question. uh absolutely fundamental building blocks to understanding what's in the book. So uh if you play Dungeons and Dragons, you have a character and your character is comprised of a number of statistics that allow it to kind of do things in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. If you want to climb a wall, you need to roll a dice. And the value that you roll on the dice is then modified by your ability score. Um which is something it's a statistic on your character sheet. Um so um on your character sheet you have six main statistics. Strength uh how strong you are. Dexterity, how quick you are. Um constitution, how healthy you are. Um intelligence, how smart you are. Wisdom, more of how worldly you are um or spiritually inclined you are. And charisma uh which is um how charming you are. And so these statistics get kind of interpreted through the rules into a bunch of formula that are used to reconcile combat um and interact with other things in the world. And um they kind of become this focal point um to uh understanding how to play the game. Um you can play the game in a very rules-like way and just be like I want to inhabit the world. I'm going to fight this monster. Tell me what happens dungeon master. Uh like you could play it in a diceless way. Um, but most people use dice to reconcile the activities um in the game. And it'd probably be more of a form of house ruling if you didn't um use the dice.
Not necessarily a bad game, just kind of a house ruled game. The rule book comes with all these uh ways to play the game with statistics um and formula. And so, um, when you're designing a character, um, you're kind of creating the ba building blocks for how, um, this being, this entity is going to interact with the world. Um, and that's really, really a profound moment of game design. Um, that I think is underexplored with Dungeons and Dragons. Um, and I think it's underexplored because it's coincides with the rise of the personal computer almost perfectly. Um so while Dungeons and Dragons is being invented and engineered um suddenly you have um people at colleges across um United States and eventually the world um getting their first computers um hooking into this thing called the internet and trying to find things to do with them.
And famously uh one of the very first games that got boxed into the personal computer was a game called Rogue. Um which is one of the most uh profound uh games uh in terms of shaping the history of digital gaming ever made. And in Rogue, you're basically a rogue trying to get into the 99th I think level of the dungeon to steal like I think it's a crown uh and to get back out of the dungeon alive. It's really hard. If you die, you die. It's got perade death in it. Um and um you find un items and stuff to modify your character. And importantly um the character design in Rogue is completely modeled after Dungeons and Dragons. So um all the stats have been kind of cribed from Dungeons and Dragons, maybe slightly modified to make the game more exciting on the computer. Um, but basically it was a game that that fans made and they wanted it to look like Dungeons and Dragons and they did the best job they could getting the quantitative system of Dungeons and Dragons into this game. Um, to the point that, you know, you're rolling dice, you're rolling dice to see if you hit, you're rolling dice to see how much damage you do and so on and so forth. Um, and your character has the same statistics, strength, dexterity, wisdom, so on and so forth. And so this moment, it seems really subtle because it's just like, well, we're just taking this game that existed in the tabletop space and moving into the digital space is actually a really profoundly important moment in game design because it's a moment where suddenly it was structured into digital games what
digital games would be like for the most part moving forward. And an important thing there was that um gameplay-wise mechanics that use numbers were really really compatible with computers. Um and so therefore in most computer games there's a way of abstracting our bodies which are really complex things into numbers. Um and that for me is really where Dungeons and Dragons and this book gets its juice, right? like it's trying to understand this key cultural moment where this tabletop game becomes a digital game and then gets kind of rubber stamped into a ton of other digital games that we play today in a variety of ways. And what I want to know as a researcher is what did we bring with it? What came along with that design? What cultural values came along with that design? And I think some of the sad and depressing things are these were ways to actually imagine and reduce our bodies into things that um are really compatible with cultural stereotypes. Um so for example um in early Dungeons and Dragons there was fans that um strongly believe that you know women were weaker than men um and uh but maybe more nimble than men. Um, and so those are stereotypes around the fe female body that came from sword and sorcery fiction. Like think about like Conan the Barbarian, his friends and uh read Sonia and what they were good at and stuff. And they were basically
interpreting these literary ideas around what the body was and how a body would operate in a story. Um, and turning them into game mechanics. Um uh and so you'd get these early moments where fans would say like, "Oh, hey, maybe this man should fight a little stronger than this woman, and maybe this woman should uh move a little faster than this man because they have biologically diff uh different bodies." And as it turns out, Gary Gyax, one of the main designers of the early Dungeons and Dragons, uh described himself as a biological determinist. These were things he actually believed in. Um, and so these are values that kind of made their way into digital games. I most controversially Rim World I think recently really really picks up on these algorithms and stuff and there's been um I think Cecilia de Anastasio has written a really good critique of Rim World in this regard and how it kind of stereotypes bodies especially the bodies of women but it does it for all kinds of bodies. deserves fans writing uh in I think they were trying to be allies at the time about how um they're trying to bring more people of color into Dungeons and Dragons and you know they were saying like well maybe there's a one out of 10 chance the player will be black or the character will be black one out of 10 chance they'll be dark one out of 10 chance that they'll um uh I think maybe oriental is one of the things on the table um but some really troubling stuff gets moved there then in the name of classification and quantification and so that's really what the book is about is kind of trying to look at that moment of
transference uh to the digital world and ask ourselves like what got what values got brought with them and I think some of these values were exciting gameplay values but kind of ugly cultural values and that's really what the book wants to talk about.
Yeah, this is really interesting because you know on the one hand I think that oh like if somebody's stronger they should just have a higher number. Isn't that natural? seems like a thing that you might say about a game like this. And I, you know, numbers also because of their feeling of objectivity, I think lose some of the interpretive aspects behind them once they become encoded.
Yeah. I I I mean like so the I I'm a cultural critic and I write about games and so games like Dungeons and Dragons are often what I talk about. Um, and you know, memes are things that people love, so that's sometimes hard to hear. But the big bad here is actually not a game. It's medicine. Like that medicine did the original thing of kind of interpreting the body as a set of numbers. Um, uh, we have things like the body mass index, which um is a way to doctors still use today very frequently to um judge the health of their patients. And it's not necessarily an accurate index. Um and often um for people whose bodies don't find fall within the parameters of that index, it can be a really uh triggering or challenging thing to experience going to a doctor and having them discriminate against you because of your weight just going into the office and your your your health is fine. Every other readout can be fine, but um this index says, "Hey, you you don't fit into this parameter.
Uh you should do this more. You should do this more." Um and that's just one example. um uh you know we had blood quantum as a way to understand race um in North America for a a long time. That was something that was used to determine the vote. It's a really ugly part of American history. Um so we have numbers and the body aligning in a lot of really really concerning cultural uh ways. Uh not to mention things like eugenics which like explicitly were about like how do we find the best body, the best person? Um, and so a lot of these troubling things, I think, um, are really things that are contained within the values of not just Dungeons and Dragons, but most games we play today. And, um, that doesn't mean we should hate the games, but it means that we should understand critically what's happening there and be able to decide for ourselves if we agree with that value that the games being put in and the very least have intellectual and intelligent conversations with the friends at the table about what's happening there.
[snorts]
So, okay, let's talk about a little bit of history and then some current stuff. So, one thing that um I thought was very interesting in this book is sort of the discussion of stats that are specifically associated with um female characters such as physical attractiveness and like the attractiveness
different races of women to different races of men like uh what uh and then I I'd heard about the harlot table but I had never seen in person um the harlot table. And like I I admit like I know it's not funny but like I had a big laugh about it. So you know these are not things
I don't think any of this is in current D and D. So like how did this get in here? How did it get out? And like for people who haven't seen it like what are we talking about?
Yeah. And some of it never got in. So um I I should be explicit about that. Um and I you know I laughed also um when I encountered many of these materials. It's it's uh it's one of those things like what else can you do but laugh when you see um kind of these tropes that oppress us in so many ways uh reiterated I I think so unabashedly in some of the early editions of Dungeons and Dragons and some of the fan discourse where you're like nobody would think that this is okay. Uh most people would be uh not cool with this, but um but yeah, it's also the realm of uh young men and adolescent men where uh all you do is laugh at a lot of things.
Um um anyways, uh yeah, so so there's two things that you you brought up there. I'll do I'll do them once at a time and then I'll talk about like how they got in and how they got out. Um uh so the first thing is there there is a table um that was made by a fan Len Lovka um where he tries to figure out um how attracted um men and women of different races uh within Dungeons and Dragons, different fantasy races uh would be to each other. So, for instance, um an elf would be only attracted to an orc man um unlike a roll of a 20 on a 20-sided dice, whereas that orc man would be attracted to that fair skinned elf um on a roll of a 10 on that same dice. So that's um that's a 50% chance for those of you uh who don't know what we're talking about with D20 speak versus a 5% chance. Um and so it's it's clearly very racially coded and I mean explicitly racially coded uh within the fantasy races of Dungeons and Dragons, arguably racially coded within the um uh ways that we understand race today with elves being fair and and orcs being um darker skinned. Uh and um and yeah, so that was a fan modification of Dungeons and Dragons and one that got published by the official Dungeons and Dragons magazine Dragon um back in uh the 70s.
Uh so for me, I think um that's important and it was one that pissed a lot of women off at the time. Alarms and Excursions had an image with um uh Len Lovka being hung next to Gary Gyax by a group of angry women um because it was not received uh well at the time by um some of the women who were playing Dungeons and Dragons in the fan community and I would also argue some of the womens who eventually left the game um because they were not heard in the fan community. Um it was not necessarily a space of equity for a long time. Um, so that was definitely a fan production. And then the other thing is the harlot table. And the harlot table was p published in the original Dungeons Masters Guide to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. So I think this was 1979. It was in the late '7s at the very least.
Um, and this kind of for those of you who don't play the game, this is kind of a repository of all the information you might need to build the world of Dungeons and Dragons as the dungeon master. So, if there's like if you're looking to figure out how to give treasure to your players, there's several several several pages of tables that you can roll on for the loot and descriptions of the loot itself and what it um what you'd find. So, one of the things they have in this book is random encounters, who you might meet if you're just walking around town or the wilderness. And um infamously there's this table called the harlot table which is basically the kinds of women you might meet in a town. Um and it's all stereotypical titles for women. Uh you roll hundsided dice and there's many and you know um many women of the night that you can encounter um on the harlot table. Uh and it's it's really kind of offensive and kind of explicitly uh so in so far as it's just like yes um uh this is the role of women in this game is that they are to be objectified by the assumed male player um and specifically as sex workers. Um and so uh and uh and yeah it's it's it's pretty clear that's why it's infamous uh what the problems with the table are. It was so problematic that they eventually removed it. It was not in the second edition of the game. Um, uh, after Geer Gag left the company. Um, it was not within the revised versions. I think
it's known within the fan community to have been highly problematic. So, it's not something that kind of flew under the radar at the time, but it is definitely um, the sort of thing that uh, pissed people off and ought to have pissed people off because it it it was not cool. Um, so um, how did the stuff get into the game? Well, uh, for the fan stuff, I think Gary Giggax, um, created a system that used a lot of numbers and encouraged people to think about bodies as numbers. And so, uh, the next logical step from there is like thinking about difference as numbers, uh, cultural differences, numbers. So, what's the difference between a man and a woman in terms of the numbers that define our bodies? What's the difference between a black man, a white man? um uh uh and a woman um regarding numbers in their bodies. Uh so that you know leads down this road and um eventually you get these mechanics also looking at the world in from a sociological angle. um you know uh because this is a woman where there's an assume a game where with an assumed male player um how can we think about uh women as sex workers or objects to be interacted with by men in the game and um and so that got explicitly put into the rules of the game um and in a way that you would not really expect a game to do today unless it was deliberately doing satire like some um uh games do. So I think that's a a long answer to a great question. Yeah.
Also, um I'm sure you mentioned this. I feel like I remember, but I'm assuming that you don't meet any men who are labeled as slovenly trolls or like brazen trumpets or cheap trolops. These are all women and that
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's uh that's Yeah, that these are all um titles from the harlot table. So um yeah, these I I would definitely say uh the assumption there is that all the harlots are women and they actually have descriptions of them also book.
Yeah. Um
so you can also very heteronormative
that yeah that's that's that is a great point. That is an excellent point. um uh which is interesting because I think um one of the amazing things about um role playing games on a whole is that within the um role playing side of Dungeons and Dragons, the ability of Dungeons and Dragons to allow players to choose to play any character they like. Um actually this has been something that's been uh really popularized within the the queer community. uh not just within the last 20 years, but um I think since the game's been going on, there's always been um an undercurrent of queer players really enjoying um the fact that the role playing side of the game allowed them um to to uh live out some of the fantasies that they might have had. So, um this is uh this is a an interesting um it's an interesting game in so far as it uh it it does a lot of things that are really amazing um and progressive in the community. Uh but there's also some conservative aspects that are living within the game as well. And I think that's one of the things that makes it really fascinating.
Yes. Um so we've talked about some of the games like issues with sexism, but you also um we've alluded to it previously in this conversation, but there are also some racial and cultural issues that come up with this sort of quantification system. Uh and you have a whole chapter in here about the Orientalism expansion.
Yeah, Oriental Adventures. um a a book that was not just published once um in the 80s by Gary Gyak and his friends, but also published again um in the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Um uh so yeah, uh this is this has been a big part of Dungeons and Dragons lore. Fortunately, one we haven't um revisited in quite the same in sensitive terms. Um, we have I I think uh the wonderful supplement Journeys of the Radial Citadel tries to bring a little of that flavor in, but actually brought in um kind of a bipok coalition of artists and game designers to do that and accomplish that, which was an amazing decision they made on their part. But um but yeah, uh yeah, the book goes into race a little.
Um I want to talk about orientalism. I think this is a word that we get wrong a lot um and appropriation because this is also a word I think that um uh can be it can kind of run away with itself a little and um uh when I use the word orientalism I'm actually talking about something very specific um and it's not about appropriation necessarily um so what orientalism or appropriation in so far as it's driven by a profit motive um which is I think how we have popularized the But orientalism um what orientalism is is the idea that you have um a white European or western um academic or expert um who is specifically expert in knowledge around the far east. Um usually Asian knowledge um orientalism can span from um uh oh my god uh uh not only kind of China, Japan and the Philippines but also to um uh the Middle East. Um all this is sort of in India.
All this is a region that's kind of orientalized um by um this class of uh white European expert. And so orientalism as coined by this academic Edward Sed is about how these experts um uh coming from kind of a western knowledge perspective um would get positions at like a university or um within their kind of cultural community and then claim expert knowledge over cultures that were not their own. And this expert knowledge was often uh used as a way to exoticize these cultures um and to promote a bunch of cultural stereotypes that people living in these cultures didn't necessarily agree with.
And so orientalism is actually about the control of knowledge. Who is able to tell you this is what your culture is? Um and so that idea that knowledge is controlled by um people who are not of the culture um is what orientalism is. Now baked within that is also appropriation, right? Like when uh Elvis Presley uh sang the blues, right? Like that's a moment of cultural appropriation but not a moment of orientalism. Um and so what happens with Dungeons and Dragons is you have people like Gary Gyak who saw himself as an um orientalist. You have people like Mr. R Barker who wrote Empire of the Pedal Throne which TSR hobbies uh put out uh who also saw who was actually employed as an orientalist um by a university but was also um actually low-key a white supremacist and like published this like academic neo-Nazi journal and was part of the editorial board of that and stuff. So there's like a lot of stuff baked in and tied around orientalism that's compatible with it. But in this book, I crit critique specifically the idea of white game designers going in and saying, "We understand um what East Asian culture is. We understand what Middle Eastern culture is, uh Arabian culture is, and we are going to define it in our works and create game mechanics around that." Um there's been a tremendous move at least in the digital game industry and I think in some spaces of the tabletop game industry away from that kind of design uh where they bring in cultural consultants. They try to bring in even
designers sometimes of the culture um that they're trying to represent in games. But um D&D did it in a really I I say profound but not necessarily in the good way uh way back in the 70s and 80s. Um, and I think um, it inspired a lot of game designers to do similar things. Now, one thing I'll say just in defense of the fan community u, because I think it's also important that to not create an anacronistic sense of history here. Um, looking back on this, it's a lot easier to critique than it probably was to live in at the time. from people I've spoken to and done interviews with, they were desperate to find anything that was um interesting and um outside of their culture. So like a ninja in a game was just a really really tremendously exciting thing I think for a lot of players at the time. And I don't think they were thinking necessarily about the cultural values where this was taken from, how this is being presented. It was just this is so exciting. It's new.
It's fresh. It's something that we don't have access to right now. And so in these early moments of fan culture, um, you know, they're often moving around things like black exploitation films, things like kung fu movies, um, where this conversation really just wasn't around appropriation so much as it was around celebration of culture, right? Remember in the 90s we have this multiculturalist movement which is all about like celebrating different cultures and that involves sharing culture and I think that's important too. So, a lot of people may have been performing orientalism even if it wasn't meant to be hurting anybody's feelings or meant to be taking um things. It can be a mode of inclusion as well.
This actually leads me to another question which is, you know, we talked about the influence of this on modern computer games. You know, I've played a bajillion RPGs where people have stats. I've played a ton of Elder Scrolls games where you get like a little racial bonus depending on who you pick. Um, and I've also noticed, you know, there are clearly discussions about this and there are efforts at being more inclusive. Like if you open up a modern D&D book, you're going to see stats, but you're also going to see at least an artistic attempt at showing diversity. Um, so I guess the question is like, is this enough? And how do you try to back out of a problematic system and make it work for a more diverse world that thinks about it more?
Yeah. Um, that's a great question. So, I think the strategy that's being used right now is one of trying to um promote um uh systems that do not reduce um people and bodies to numbers because uh like as I'm critiquing in this book, uh these systems can promote stereotypes and those stereotypes are really problematic and hurtful. Um, and that I think is part of the modern school of game design and is very compatible with the industry, right? Industry wants to sell games to as many people as possible. And so, um, doing things that don't piss people off is good for industry. Um, generally, uh, generally speaking, um, so I think that's the strategy that industry is using right now. And I think it's been a relatively successful economic strategy. Uh, industry kind of gets to have its cake and eat it too. um they get to sell um campaign supplements um within a diverse set of worlds and if they bring in cultural consultants um they can often have these worlds be sensitive in a way that doesn't piss people off and in fact you know winds up employing um uh people of color, women uh people who have long had a hard time getting into the game design industry also and all that I think is really good. Um personally uh I don't think uh though erasing race which is one of the approaches that has been popular recently um is one that um
I uh enjoy in game design and I I have two reasons for this. Um, so the one is I um as somebody I was joking about being old to Liz before we we started recording, but um I'm in my 40s right now and I grew up with a lot of um game design uh that that really uh leans into this and one of the things I think it does well uh when we are able to um have lots of different kinds of people and reflect them mechanically in the games that we play um not stereotypically but at least try to do some kind of mechanical reflection. Um, I think it creates a more um elaborate and ornamental kind of game. Um, there's just a kind of uh specificity to that design that I think is really interesting. It's interesting to talk about. It's interesting to think about um what kind of thinking went into transposing this mechanic into this person and this body. What does this mean and how can we talk about it? Um, so that's I think the first thing is I I like that that sense of ornament. I think that um there's some kind of aesthetic I don't want to use the word beauty, but I think there's some sort of aesthetic quality that's important there. Um, and when we remove things um I think that we lose that sense of beauty that's there when we add a lot of ornament and detail to the things that we construct. Um, and I believe that strongly. Um the other thing though that's important here um is I actually
think it uh forecloses a conversation about um racial difference. It forcloses a conversation about gender difference. And I think these conversations are actually really really important to have. I think conversations like this are how we get to understand each other. I think they're how we get to understand um the profound amount of difference that there is in the world. And I think that understanding difference is actually um the path to inclusivity uh where we can understand and not be frightened by each other when we encounter each other. And so by foreclosing conversations on difference, taking them out of the mechanics in games we play, I actually think um we foreclose the the potential conversation that we could be having around difference. And I think that's the more important thing to be doing. Um I I often I used to joke that like why after we play a game any table talk after katan after we play a game of katan why don't we shake hands why don't we have a 20-minut session talking about what happened in that game talking about our experience of that game how we felt during that game after every game of baseball the players still line up on the field and shake each other's hands after they play and that's important because we get emotional when we play games and we need something to diffuse that emotion and we don't have mechanisms like that in um the tabletop games we play. Although those games we have better mechanisms then than in the digital games we play where you just play with a computer and there's no room
to have that conversation or that debrief afterwards. And so I think these mechanics that can be controversial in a game like Dungeons and Dragons become more dangerous in a game like Skyrim where you're not going to actually have that space to openly have a conversation around what does that racial modifier mean? Um whereas in a game of Dungeons and Dragons with the right group, somebody can say actually this makes me uncomfortable when we play with this mechanic. Um and in that moment when someone says that actually everybody at the table learns something about that person in that culture and they learn it in a personal way that doesn't feel preachy, that feels authentic, that feels organic and helps them grow as a person understanding difference within the communities around them. So I have some mixed feelings about the approach that companies are taking towards it. I understand why they take it, but I don't actually think it's a solution that's going to give us um I I hope um as someone who really believes strongly in racial and gender equity, um uh the uh legs to u move the conversation to where it needs to go long term.
Yeah, I think it's a good point. Um, so there's one other thing I read in this book that I had never thought about and it kind of floored me. Uh, just because so when I as a kid I was told never to play Dungeons and Dragons because of Satan because I have fundamentals as Christian grandparents. So of course the very first thing I did when I went to college and could play D and D was play it. But
uh, but I did not know that Gary Gyax was a Jehovah's Witness.
Yeah.
And I think that is fascinating. It it it really is and it's um he was very private about it. So um so uh you know a lot of um the chapter that I wrote on religion in Dungeons and Dragons uh the research on that is very much based on trying to understand the religion itself. Um trying to understand the game mechanics and some of the discourse um that has bubbled up in popular culture um around his opinions about religion. But like yeah, like there are no angels in Dungeons and Dragons and this is why um because he felt that angels were sacred and that they ought not um be put into the game. Uh and devils were not included for a long time for similar reasons. Um but because they weren't uh sacred in the same way, I they were not um kept out outside of the game eventually. Um I forget if they're still and the book has the answers. If I forget some of the things right now in the conversation, I promise you the book has all of the answers in it. Um, I know that feeling very well.
Um, but yeah, um, but yeah, he was a Jehovah's Witness. Um, the most fascinating part, um, about his Jehovah's Witness, um, is, I think, the alignment table, where he brings in, um, not just his religion, but a lot of other different spiritualities, and he tries to kind of map them all onto what we now know as the alignment grid, which is, um, a 3x3 grid. Um on one corner uh one axis is everything from law to chaos and the other axis is everything from good to evil. And then ostensibly you could find yourself somewhere in the the grid. But also he shows you like well heaven is like lawful good and like the alisium fields are here and uh limbo is here and you know he takes a little from every religion and kind of puts them onto this table which is really fascinating. But then he outdo himself and then he has a second table where he takes like a ton of monsters and then he puts them all on the alignment table and they're also often aligned with like in mythology where they would go on the table. So it's a really fascinating artifact of design. Um and one that we've clearly seen on the internet today, right? Like I can figure out what alignment you are by looking at how your toothpaste tube uh squeezes out the toothpaste. There's lots of jokes and gags about um putting things on the alignment table. Um, and yeah, it's it's a really fascinating artifact of design and one where I feel like you can really kind of act watch Gary Gyax in real time working through um his thoughts on religion but also on other religions and
trying to reconcile them all into one kind of uh design artifact that that would serve the game. And then this kind of segus into his thinking about spirituality in the plains. Uh if if you haven't played Dungeons and Dragons, it's not just, you know, good and evil and like heaven and hell, but you also have like a plane of fire, a plane of water. There's an astral plane where you can travel around on in your dreams and stuff like that. Um and so he juxtaposes all of this also into like the spirituality of the planes, which honestly has a lot to do with like new age thinking and um uh is also equally fascinating. So yeah, it was it was amazing to read up on religion uh to do that chapter. Yeah, I feel like there is a whole lot more there, probably more than we can reasonably fit into what remains of this this podcast.
Um, so I'm going to leave it there, but seriously, people should buy this book just to read the religion chapter. It was really really interesting. And also, I just find it hilarious that you could have a satanic panic moment over the work of a very devout man. Like, it just goes to show, right? You just
It It does. It says something about um some people who uh u yes are uh who get uh concerned about things. Um yeah, for sure. So,
also I did not realize that Mazes Monsters is also a novel. There's like a book cover in here.
Yeah, Ronald Jaffy. Maze and Monsters. Not just a a movie with uh Tom Hanks um but a book also.
Crazy. I'm trying to decide like do I want to read this or not? Like what would this do to my brain cell count to read this? Would it be good or would it be bad? But
there's there's got to be like um some enterprising person, especially since Dungeons and Dragons is so popular these days, should really do tours of the sewer system underneath Michigan State University, um where Dallas Eggbert got lost once upon a time. Um, that would just be fascinating to to see those sewers.
If we're being real, I would go. So,
yeah,
there's there's got to be someone there. Someone some some hungry student looking for some money.
Always. Isn't that there? It was my nature, but incredible. Um, so unfortunately, we'll have to I'm going to wind this down to ask softy questions, but oh man, this is a short book, but there's just so much in it. Like, I think you could just go and go and go. Um, but uh what games have you been playing lately that bring you some joy?
Yeah. Um, I just played through the the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake. I had a baby, so I'm playing more um solo games um and digital games than I have in the past. Um but uh but yeah, so um yeah, I'm playing through um the Assassin's Creed thing, but if I'm being honest, I've been playing a ton of Slay the Spire. I am hooked. Slay the Spire 2. I'm hooked on that game. um that that game is a ton of fun. Um and then if uh for tabletop games right now um uh doing um some Dwarf Romantic as kind of a cozy cozy and easy game to get to the table. Um but I'm excited to kind of uh get back into it a little more now that I'm a few months into Parenthood.
Awesome. Uh and if people want to follow your work online, where do you like to be found? Um yeah, so the the best way to follow my work online is I've got a website aaron.com. Uh you can read a lot of other things I've written. In fact, you can read most of the essays um that went into this book. Um there uh many of them are just published and linked there freely. Um and uh I also have a blue sky which is Aaron Tram um at however you do blue sky. Um but I am very off social media these days. So, um, that is a place where if you message me or you follow me, you might hear back, uh, in a few weeks. Um, so, but I'll eventually get back. Um, but aaron.com is probably the best place to follow me in my work, although it needs an update.
Fantastic, Aaron. It's so good to have you on. It's an absolute delight every time you come out with a book. So, may there be many more.
Thanks, Liz. Also, great to be here. And, uh, yeah, I was happy to be on your podcast. Lucky number 13.
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