Wizards of the Coast will now get cultural consultants to look over “every word, illustration, and map” for all future Dungeons and Dragons products, after offensive material made its way into the recently released Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. It’s also reprinting the books, after applying this new process to them.
The controversy that led to these changes involved Spelljammer’s Hadozee race. The Hadozee’s backstory of slavery and resemblance to monkeys caused many to see the content as a racist stereotype – and illustrations with some resemblance to ‘minstrel’ depictions added further fuel to the fire.
Fans pointing out these issues prompted Wizards of the Coast to remove the content on digital DnD Beyond copies, and then issue an apology that the book was not “properly vetted”.
Off the back of this, the company is now expanding its pool of cultural consultants and introducing a “new inclusion-review process”. According to the D&D Beyond post published by Christopher Perkins on Thursday, which announced these changes, inclusion reviews were previously performed at the discretion of the project lead, who would earmark content that needed scrutiny.
Now they’ll be mandatory for every part, and carried out at at least three points in the design stage of all products. Both text and art will be reviewed separately, and then the finished product will be scrutinised with both art and text together.
DnD fans can get an immediate sense of the kind of changes these sensitivity readers will be applying through the Spelljammer: Adventures in Space errata – which shows what content will change in the reprinted versions.
Check out our Spelljammer: Adventures in Space review if you’re interested to know more about the product. We found it to be a little lacklustre, with stripped down rules and much missed potential.