Brennan Lee Mulligan Explains Dimension 20's Sensitive Storytelling
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
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This interview snippet is from my Dimension 20 A Crown of Candy interview with Brennan Lee Mulligan. You can watch the whole thing here: • Interviewing Brennan L...
In this interview snippet, Brennan Lee Mulligan explains how Dimension 20 is being sensitive in storytelling.
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Follow Brennan on Twitter: / brennanlm
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ABOUT OREN COHEN
Hi there! I'm that guy who interviewed Brennan Lee Mulligan and other DMs about your favorite Dimension 20 season. My name is Oren Cohen, and I'm a software engineer by day and a total nerd by night. When I'm not interviewing awesome people, I love reading fantasy books, playing video games, and indulging in TV shows and movies. I'm also writing a personal blog about various topics and enjoy talking and teaching content creation. Reach out! I love to talk to other nerds in the community!
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If you are revisiting this video, you might have noticed that its name and thumbnail have been changed. I'd like to explain my motives for why:
1. There was this wrong misconception that what Brennan says in this video is what *every storyteller* should do when in fact this was just for TV and other media productions who need to be sensitive for their audiences. You can do what you want in your private home games.
2. After joining a discord server associated with D20 (but not Dropout's official one), I found a discussion about this video that dawned on me that people think this was "2 straight cis guys making a lgbt sensitivity video" and that was never my intention. This video also contains a discussion about race and not just LGBT. So I opted to go with a neutral black background.
In any case, thanks for watching and for the constructive criticism. I'm happy with the discussion this video generated, but I also realized that posting it as it was caused confusion. We learn every day.
I'm very queer and I wasn't bothered by that tbh, good video.
this is a really good very conscious explanation without an apology and reasoning thank you
The fact that Dimension 20, a show that has POC and LGBTQIA cast members and staff, still hire sensitivity consultants, shows you can never be too considerate to your audience.
Right? It's an amazing part of the storytelling work and adds a deep layer of personalization to the characters :)
And they do a great job of having the diverse cast and highlighting the diversity of the characters without it being their single defining attribute. The team is fantastic.
It's really fantastic. Also shows how much they care about their cast, that they don't pigeonhole cast members of color/queerness into becoming sensitivity consultants (which is just unpaid labor in most companies)
It shows that they over did it with the consideration to the audience. You don't need sensitivity training. You're an idiot if you think so.
Your audience, or rather your Twitter followers?
Seriously, hiring a sensitivity cunsultant is mainly a formality. The practical part is that, if you hired one, nobody can call you out for not having hired one.
Some recurring themes I see in the comments here that I want to debunk:
- Being sensitive makes the story weaker - no, it's not. It makes it richer by taking a group you painted in a singular light and expanding on it to show it's more than the story says.
- Private tables can't hire a sensitivity consultant - they don't need to - sensitivity in media is mainly required for big far-reaching productions like TV shows. If you're playing a home game, have a session zero with your players and explain the world to them. If there's something they give you a hard pass on, rebuild it together.
I'll add more as I see them recurring.
If any sensitivity consultants are watching and want to lend their experienced views, please feel free to comment below!
On the first point I would argue how sensitive you are being. Do you try not to make certain characters villains because of their orientation or race? Or do you acknowledge the fact that anyone can be a villain regardless of their walk of life and risk people being angry at you?
A conversation I had a little bit ago was about curing disabled characters, the person I was talking to argued that having a disabled character use a magical cure-all to "fix" themselves was alienating disabled people that don't have cures for their ailments in the real world and was offensive in somehow implying that while they are disabled, they arent enough.
My argument was of all the people disabled people I know, I dont know a single one that , if given the option, WOULDNT use a magical cure-all to cure their disability. If given the option, No one would choose to be disabled.
So do you go with the logical, and most likely in character option of a disabled person curing themselves with a mcguffin? Or do you have them break logic and character for the sake of possible sensitivity?
@@madmintentertainment6268 thanks for the comment :)
In my mind making the story richer, isn’t about making different decisions for the character. If it makes sense for my black character to be a villain, I wouldn’t change that. I would add to the world more black people to show that this villain isn’t the only representative for them in my world (thus making the story richer because we know more about black people now)
@@geek_peek A fair answer. Thank you for replying so quickly!
How would you address the disabled points?
@@madmintentertainment6268 Honestly? I don’t have a good answer. I’m not disabled so I wouldn’t want to impose my opinion. We could either risk cliché writing or offending some disabled readers. By working with a sensitivity consultant we can find a way to write something that strikes a certain balance.
You can’t appease everyone but you also don’t want to be a major douche. So, while accepting that no matter how much work I do for sensitivity there will still be people my writing offends them, I will still do work with a sensitivity consultant to create something that many disabled people could find themselves represented in.
@@geek_peek Another fair answer.
Lasly, just cause im interested in your opinion, what do you think the difference is between being sensitive and straight up censoring art?
Thank you for your time.
Actually, contrary to what Brennan says here, none of the characters in A Crown of Candy were bad eggs. I don't think we met any egg people, actually.
I see what you did there, Nick. Well played ;)
But some of the foods would need eggs, like Ice Cream People or Cake People or Pasta People, Therefore the cake man is a bad egg.
Also Brennan is very good at being funny while being sensitive. Seen way too many comedians who claim to be sensitive just put on a boring seminar without any punchlines
See: Bill Seacaster talks gender with Fig, then threatens to kill her if she speaks out of turn again
Exactly this!!!!! Brennan CONSISTENTLY makes me belly laugh. Because he’s funny, and he knows how to do so without punching down.
100%. I actually just looked this up because I wanted to recommend it: Maybe the hardest I've ever laughed watching a Dropout show was the Adventuring Party episode for episode 13 of D20: Neverafter. There's an absolutely hilarious running bit about woke culture and virtue signaling. (Obviously please watch the show up to that point first, the AP includes huge spoilers for the season up to that point, and of course the show itself is phenomenal.)
one thing i like about Brennan is when portraying people of color as a yt person he doesnt do over the top accents like THIS MAN IS BLACK SO HE SOUNDS "BLACK"
But at the same time, you often very quickly get a mental picture of the person. Like Lou's character's family in Unsleeping City, he didn't really do much more than an old dude voice, but you instantly saw this old Black dude. Big goals as a DM.
Reminded of lou being surprised that Arthur auegfort (spelling?) was black and then upon realising he was, was delighted.
He doesn't do it with Asians, either. His Battle for Beyond character, Nikhil, was coded Indian -- DM Jasmine Bhullar even gave the character's sister a distinctly Indian accent. Brennan just spoke with his Broadcast American English accent.
Bear in mind Brennan can do quite a lot of white accents, from New Yawkuh to Sad Italian Man, to Russian mobster, to various flavors of Tim Curry, and many more.
I am suddenly struck by the memory of so many different popular franchises that so clearly did not hire sensitivity consultants when they _really should have._ Like, Dimension 20 and how it does inclusivity and representation fuckin rules, so evidently bringing on a consultant is well worth it. Props to Brennan and the gang for caring enough to make sure they did it right.
Name names!!!
Not in the D&D community but Rooster Teeth jumps instantly to mind.
@@bobina05 BRO Roosterteeth is soo bad at this, i agree.
@@amoschew3609 yeah they are and they are also terrible about doing basic background checks on their employees because they have had multiple sex offenders work for them over the years heck they probably still have a few we don't know about
Some people may look at this and say "Why go through so much work just to cater to minorities?"
Speaking as a member of a 'minority' (even though as a Chinese I am part of technically the most populous ethnicity in the world), I put in a lot of mental work trying to navigate through toxicity, conscious or otherwise, in my media, social circles, politics, etc. I have to brace myself on social media to see a racial slur, or to watch my language in a chatroom because I don't know what kind of reaction I will get, or to see racism perpetrated against people who look like me, or even people of a different minority, because I know that bigots and extremists don't care which minority they persecute.
For people like Brennan and the Dimension 20 people to put in the effort to be sensitive, which, and I swear I'm not trying to play misery poker here, is a tiny amount compared to the effort POC and LGBTQIA people need to exert every waking moment of their lives, is incredibly welcome.
The royal lesbians in ACoC were just amazing
Once again, Brennan Lee Mulligan shows himself to be one of the greatest humans to ever walk this earth
I love that he brought up disability, and that D20 has included non-terrible disability representation for years. It's amazing to not have to settle for "Well, at least they're cool with queer people" in terms of representation.
I remember loving this part of the interview and I still do
How did you get the chance to interview Brennan??! I've seen a bunch of snippets now I love your questions and vibe. Just subscribed
Thanks for subscribing, and welcome to our nerdy little family! Interviewing Brennan began when I wrote an article on Medium about The Unsleeping City, and Medium curated it on the homepage. This was back in 2019 when CollegeHumor still had a PR office. They reached out to connect Brennan and me and from there we just kept in touch :)
@@geek_peek that's so fucking heartwarming, and he keeps coming back also. Fuck I love this
I am so bloody glad that someone finally recognizes the presence of medieval European POC (despite how many include orcs and elves but can’t image someone who isn’t white)
th-cam.com/video/6EZCBSsBxko/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=Netflix
You're not wrong, but elves and orcs have definitely been racially coded to a degree that this movie was possible.
As weird as it may be considering everyone is food-people, there are a few characters I feel are Black/PoC-coded quite well in ACoC. Amathar and his daughters, Caramelinda, Lapin, Belisabeth Brassica, Gooey... Probably tons more.
And even if it isn't explicitly stated as such, I think most other characters have lended themselves well to being portrayed as non-white in most fan art I've seen. Same with queerness.
I've seen a headcanon from a fan-artist that a certain candyfloss monk is trans and honestly, I can see it. Not least because of his color scheme 🏳️⚧️
Oh wow! I've never thought about that monk that way! Stirs a lot of thoughts about what it even means to be trans in a world of candy :)
That line of "Lazuli made me...in a way" tho 👀
@@3ndlessL00p yeah, I see it. At the time I thought maybe he was more of like some kind of construct. Because, let’s face it, he has a very specific range of emotions 😆
I know Lou has specifically said that all of his characters will be black so including that coding in Amather's design is such an important part of that
I certainly don’t speak for the whole fanbase, but I personally see Amathar and Caramelinda as a Mixed Race Couple, which adds so many layers to it that I love. I did not like CoC going in, but I really did love it by the end once I got through it
I think its important to not make the game about inclusivity, but to include everyone naturally. Brennan does a great job with this. The points being made about it making the story weaker has to do with where you draw this line. If the narrative is intentionally "showing off" inclusivity then it comes off as ingenuine. But, again, its handled well.
I forget who it was, but there was a character Lou just assumed was white. I think because they were in a position of power. Then Brennan voiced them as a POC and Lou was blown away. Brennan was like “Why they gotta be white!?”
Was it Arthur Aguefort in Fantasy High? Brennan brought out the miniature and Lou went, "Wait, he's black?"
And Brennan went, "Yeah, dude!" as if he was really surprised.
@@nolongervisible5850 And Lou went "Hhelllll yeah!!"
It's a fair assumption to make if you are in a suposedly "eurocentric" setting and the majority of the the people you have met are implied to be white, you would then assume that the next person you meeting would be white as well.
As a practical example of this assume you have a bag with some number of red or blue tokens, you pull out a token and record the colour and return it to the bag and repeat. If having pulled out 20 tokens 19 have been blue, your reasonable assumption is that if you pull a token from the bag it will be blue.
@@nolongervisible5850 To be fair, Aguefort only showed up in 2 episodes prior to that point, and I think the majority of the description Brennan gave was "grizzled old wizard who's batshit crazy".
I think Lou brought it up when he saw the mini. Agelfort was a Dumbledore parody so that works be the default image people thought of until time otherwise.
That's so cool they still hire staff for that. I mean they should, but still. Great interview clips, I'm going to have to check out the full ones when I get the time
Thanks so much for watching! :)
This was a, um, controversial opinion at a few tables I've played at in the past... but I've always believed that unless your story / setting is SPECIFICALLY designed to address and tackle issues like racism, sexism, and homophobia/transphobia then those issues simply should not be present. If the verisimilitude of your world-building relies on the propagation of harmful aggressions like racism, then you're probably just not that creative.
I don't give a shit if medieval europe was racist, patriarchal, and xenophobic, I'm not playing D&D (a literal fantasy) so that my DM or other players can sexually or verbally harass my character.
There is only ONE situation where such things are permissible to me:
You get to immediately sock em in the mouth and knock out some teeth. It should be a way of expressing contempt for such things if it ever occurs at all.
Yeah that’s completely stupid… “our game should never have sexism! And you, the girl player, are going to get shouted over until you cave!” Like wow, how do those people run right into the point and still miss it?
Fully expecting your characters never to get treated differently, or meet someone they make lazy assumptions about, or just plain have trouble blending into a racially insular town… that’s even less realistic than wizards and dragons.
People are people. Even the uncomfortable stuff. And at a certain point in your adult life, you’re going to run face-first into your own biases. Might as well do that in a low-stakes environment like your D&D game.
@@emilysmith2965 "The sexism and micro aggressions you deal with every day in your professional life aren't enough, you should have to role-play them too, with people that get off on the idea of harassment as 'realism'."
Fucking eyeroll
@@emilysmith2965 Trauma is a thing, if my village was burned down by mages. I might be wary of them. If a dragon razes my city because some jackass robbed them. I might become a bandit that has an especial hatred for treasure hunters and dragons. If that Tiefling is summoning demons, they lose control and rampages through the town. I'm gonna be wary.
Biases in our world are quite stupid due to we have very "normalized" experiences. Yet in fantasy anything can happen and those people having legit reason to be scared are real to them. Like in D&D for example 7th ito 9th level spells are crazy when 10th level were allowed being somebody without magic that's scary. Or in something like Shadowrun where a lot of people have biases upon biases that made the universe so robust and real. Eventhough you have cyberzombies, real zombies, net running dragons and horrors slipping through the veil.
I think it all comes down to what kind of game your players want to play. I used a lot of heavy social issues to explore the caste system in my Legend of the Five Rings campaign, but usually stay more fluffy in my D&D games. Some folks this thread obviously like tackling such issues, and others don't. Why force people one way or the other? Its important for the DM to know his players, what they want at the table, and craft accordingly. Its also very different at home with a controlled audience of friends vs. what Brennan is doing trying to reach out to the largest possible audience.
I’ll add that there were communities in medieval Europe who were either “blind” about queerness or confused but accepting about queerness. In local communities, there were countless ways people dealt with local queer people. So yeah!
Can you cite sources or give examples?
That's a question I've been asking myself pretty often about my setting and the themes within. As a white, western European, denouncing things such as colonialism is easy, but depicting it is something else completely. It's no trouble writing caricatures of colonial Europeans, but when it comes to the ones who were colonized, it gets difficult. It's impossible for me alone to respectfully draw inspiration from African or Native American cultures, but in the same way choosing to deliberately write "non-coded" people seems like some pretty bad erasure of experiences that are still lived today irl.
I think the key phrase in your comment is "It's impossible for me alone"
Writing a book or some other storytelling material is always a better experience when you can share the load beyond the actual writing with other people. That's why Sensitivity consultants and beta readers are such an important part of the creative process.
Brandon Sanderson and his huge list of acknowledgements at the beginning of every novel is a great example of amazing books that are the result of great team effort :)
If you depict one side realistically and other other as caricatures, then any message you could have is lost.
Thank you a lot for asking him this question! I’m currently working with my uni on how to improve the inclusivity and general acceptance of different people without any bias among the academic and administrative stuff, and this video apparently helped me with some ideas, W interviewer W question W Brennan. Happy pride month everyone! 🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
I'm sure there's many great resources out there on this subject, good luck!
I remember watching The Unsleeping City and just being too caught up on Robert Moses being transphobic to realize he had revealed a clue
And here I thought a show about food people would be the one thing that didn't need sensitivity consultants.
Just goes to show you how deep storytelling can be :)
Considering the in-universe nature of the Ramseyan Doctrine, it was extremely important. That codification of the phrase “junk food” was racism sanctioned by religion. Very real stuff.
So, on that last question.. Are there sentient potatoes in the world? If not, then do they get sentience after processing into chips. If so, Is it asexual reproduction, or a horrible necromantic rite that births abominations of dead sentient creatures into new ones?
I believe there are sentient potatoes in Vegetania but I can't speak to the rest of your question XD
I believe Brennan has said that processed foods are not processed, they are just born that way. And that children don't have to be the same food as their parents, as long as they are within the same food type. Children to tend towards same or similar food, but I think he said it is not guaranteed
Right, like the child of a potato and a waffle might be a waffle fry. Or they might be a potato pancake. Or they might take after their Vegetanian side a lot and be a parsnip.
@@emilysmith2965 Trendy infusions are just a regrettable one night stand in Candia. Lol
Such awesome and thought-provoking conversation but I gotta say every time Brennan laughs while mildly punching his palm, it makes me feel things like sirrrr 🥵😂 Happy Pride y'all!!! 🏳🌈🏳🌈🏳🌈
The perfect follow up question.
I love the tension that comes up when you compare the idea of race between homo-sapiens versus the idea of race between different sapient creatures that can directly communicate. In either a fantasy setting or sci-fi, alien type setting.
lol at all the overly-sensitive people in the comments who think that the producer of a TV show talking about how they handle inclusivity in his TV show is somehow criticizing them for not hiring a sensitivity trainer. All this sensitivity stuff is for the audience, folks, not the players. Run your gave of 6 friends however you want. If watching this makes you feel attacked, maybe you've got some self-exploration to do.
That's what's so fun about dnd and world building in general. You get to create an entire new world, why not just take out some of the bad shit that is/was real.
Obviously that will be more difficult if there is an audience, since you don't want to downplay any real issues, but like why not go hog wild for your private play sessions? Many of us do these things as a form of escapism, so why not create a world without the concept of race or gender or class or whatever? Just delete what's bothering you irl and create something new.
I once did a couple of sessions in a post human cyberspace world, where every character was an AI. They were different kinds of AI's, but there was pretty much no concept of gender what so ever. We did femme and masc code many characters anyways, because it's fun, but we used a generic it/its for basically everyone. (except for the bbeg, who was totally not elon musks brain that was being kept alive millions of years after humanity had died out.)
That sounds like an amazing world to play in! Super jealous now XD
@hannah dreams
I mean I totally agree, a world without problems is boring to write and boring to play in.
The world we wrote still had plenty of problems, which I guess I didn't mention.
I wrote it with a friend of mine, who like me is non-binary. We wanted to find a fun way to justify a world without gender and we just landed on "what if humans were gone but the machines kept going?" It turned into a fantasy-esque parallel world, where all characters were vaguely humanoid AI's. Sometimes we would even have to navigate the "real" world in little robots or drones.
But I guess you were also spot on with the non-human escapism. I have been othered and dehumanised a lot in my life and thus feel quite disconnected from humanity. Still it feels kind of patronising the way you said it. Just FYI, because the internet can make it a bit hard to recognise, "maybe you should talk to somebody about that" is not a kind thing to say.
@@kylekillgannon No that's not what I said at all. We didn't write the world because we can't handle the concept of gender, we wrote it because we thought it would be fun to explore a world where it doesn't exist.
I didn't say that people shouldn't include their real world struggles in their writing, I said they *could*. As writers we have the freedom to create a world in whatever way we like and we can use this freedom to explore scenarios we don't get to explore in real life. That's what fantasy is about right?
Edit: thought it was the same person twice
@@u4iadreams When playing in fantasy there's gonna be "evil" because there just isn't *our* world. There's an underdark, hell, heaven, different plains maybe element based, pocket dimensions and even whole different earth like plants with different cultures. So people aren't gonna like each other. Like poking around with magic is gonna piss people off. Like the well intended Lich King revived his loved ones yet kept getting attacked by people creeped out. Orcs and Wood Elves fighting for territory. Dwarven mines stumbled on old Dragon's Horde protected by Kobolds.
Pretty much mess is gonna happen, people aren't gonna like each other. Really "people" can "solve" problems with fireballs everybody is kinda gonna be on edge.
The way I play my game is that I say discrimination exists but not for sexuality or race within a species. If there is a character who is racist against a different species, that person is 99/100 a villian or at least a scumbag and the characters know they aren't ment to be seen as normal. Other discrimination exists within context. Like a country that was ravaged by a mage war banning and persecuting wizards, etc.
Interesting! Do you feel you can portray those characters realistically or that ruling takes away some of their believability?
I don't know what a sensitivity consultant would say but I guess that if there are people who hate on a race, I would simply include someone from that race in my cast of positive people.
A good example could be from the worldbuilding of The Witcher. There's basically racism between elves and humans and there's also misogyny, and persecution against female sorcerers. And yet all of these things are balanced by having positive counters in the story: your love interest is a female sorcerer, you can gaze into the world of either elves or humans and find allies there via side quests, or you're even able to do something about the way women are treated in this game. It's dark but it works because your protagonist's moral compass is sensitive.
@Oren Cohen I really enjoy the Witcher or other darker fantasy like Game of Thrones or The First Law. They do handle it very well but honestly I never feel the need to include systemic sexism and racism that heavily. People have 10000 other ways to be douchebags to eachother. Yes, the Dark Ages didn't have gender equality and POCs were treated very poorly in Europe but they also didn't have dragons and spell casters. As long as I can present a believable world I feel like it doesn't have to mimic real life in every aspect.
At the end of the day we are playing a game and the game should be fun for everyone that plays it, so if I have to stir up some rules for that, I think that's fine. One player is super arachnophobic so we haven't seen a spider in our 95 sessions. I don't feel like that ever took away from the game.
@@geek_peek What you said about including someone positive from otherwise discriminitory cultures etc. is a very good point and something I try to actively do now. When I started DMing 6 years ago I noticed that the racial features for one of my cultures basically only worked well for rogues. I also noticed that every NPC I introduced from that race so far was a bandit or something similar. That wasn't cool and I reinvented them and focused on making their culture more diverse and adding in more perspective then "the poor ones steal and the rich ones enslave" but I still wanted to leave that connection because that divide was obviously a source for that. One of my players just outright gave a group of bandit twice of what they asked for in gold when ambushing them and told them to get their life in order. When they met them years later, those people were so touched by that genuine gesture of kindness (I think the player just didn't want to play combat lol) that the players were almost treated like royalty and the community was thriving.
In a story I would see something like this as somewhat problematic sometimes because it caaaaaaaaaan lead to a "white saviour" problem, but in TTRPG and games in general I think it is important for your actions to be influencial which means by default you will have that happen every now and then. It is a slippery slope and there is no clear cut answer. I still think it's a conversation worth having.
@@kylekillgannon Look at Dragon Prince for example. That show has racism but not within humans to eachother and their LGBTQ+ relationships are never adressed any differently than the straight ones. That show still has plenty of conflict and moral questions. it just focuses on different things.
@@kylekillgannon you are a morally empty shell.
Slam dunk interview.
Engagement for the engagement god!
Very nice interview in a calm atmosphere, but I still don't rly understand how skin colour can be an issue in a game where everybody is made out of food. I wouldn't even know how to play them as a person who represents a certain skin colour. The part with sexuality and gender identity is easier to grasp for me even if this is a topic that rarely come up at the table (cause its no big deal since we rarely have romantic or sexual relationships between characters)
Isn't it easier and simpler to just be chill and compassionate on the table? Virtue isn't a difficult and serious business, being nice comes with being easygoing and accepting of all kinds of human expression, whatever that me be.
That’s easy to say but have you seen the early aughts and before? Man, that stuff was EVERYWHERE. And it makes one cringe today. But it’s easy to get caught up in those patterns, and forget to consider what’s being said.
Basically, there’s a LOT of unlearning to be done.
@@billyalarie929 Its generally useful to apply mindfulness and other holistic practices in one's day to day life and this will tend to undo negative mental programming/patterns over time, and means greater awareness of subconcious beliefs within one's mind.
That's a lot more effective in my opinion than trying to force yourself to change. It's like trying to drive better without fixing the problems under the hood. Beating yourself up or being constantly on alert for a potential mistake will just make you more stressed and more likely to make a mistake.
Kindness with oneself and others, when we make mistakes is the way to go. Most people have good intentions and will be sensitive if told they have unset someone, and if they don't have good intentions, they won't be prompted to change anyway.
lovedddddd this! gonna save this vid for my DM group chat for sure
Such a wonderful question
Representation is for the audience not the characters in the story.
I love consistency in world building but I agree that it’s probably better for the audience to make changes.
The Dragon Prince has lots of diversity of skin color. The variety of skin tones isn’t done because travel across the 5 kingdoms is easy, it’s done because travel is easy now and a diverse group of kids are going to be watching it and growing up with each other.
I've only recently started watching D20 and they're already streets ahead on this. Actually having PoC at the table and behind the scenes means it's not just virtue signalling, and they still do more on top of that which very much shows. I also get the sense that if they did do something that was a bit off, they wouldn't hide behind those consultants, they'd admit it, address it and learn from it. Of course whether that happens might remain to be seen, but it's far better than continuing with material that is very clearly (even if unintentionally) racist.
There is a difference between sanitizing everything interesting out of your story (Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft versus Heroes of Horror),
and remaining attached to bad stereotypes, ideas, or scenarios that were never true or helpful to begin with. Trying to be aware of the latter is only ever good.
Could I get some clarification on your argument? I'm interested, but I lack the context. I haven't read Van Richten's or Heroes of Horror (though I did start my D&D career in the 3.5 days, the Hide and Move Silently pain was real), but I haven't heard that the former was sanitized, or that the latter was bad.
I assume this has to do with the controversial removal of racial ability modifiers in D&D? I think that was introduced in Van Richten's.
אני: היי סרטון עם ברנן לי מוליגן
אני: * מסתכלת על הערוץ *
אני: * מתה *
אהלן! :)
Thank you 🏳️🌈
Happy pride 😁✌️🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
I was going to try and write a story about a king who write love poems to his secret male lover who called "The King's Love Notes" came up with the concept while messing with kali linux CLI
"no but medieval Europe didn't had all this gay stuff, the show will be historically incorrect"
yes, the great old Europe, where you would go out on a walk with your low-carb asparagus wife and your (literally) sausage dog.
its a great video, but i came away a bit disappointed, as the answer to the title question was basically just hire a sensitivity consultant, and frankly thats obviously not feasible for a home ttrpg campaign
I don’t feel it’s needed for a home game. If you feel like there are some issues in your world that your players might be offended by you should have a session zero with them and explain the setting. They might even help you flesh it out more than you could alone. After all, they are going to make choices that become canon in the world you’re playing around that table.
Team secrets
Wait a sec... who was the bag of chips?
In their trailer, check out 0:15 and you'll see it there: th-cam.com/video/zOnnqKPh5RY/w-d-xo.html
I have a disagreement with Brennan about this video.
If you're going to say you're going to use medieval European history, I have never heard anyone say that POC weren't in Europe at that time. There were. All you have to do to know about that is know that the Moors, Muslims from North Africa, invaded and conquered the Iberian Peninsula -- Spain -- in, I think, 1148(?).
Additionally, during it's existence, the Roman Empire, which stretched from Ireland to Turkey, from Israel to Russia, dealt heavily in African slaves.
So two things become apparent:
1) Religion was more important than race in medieval Europe, even during the polytheistic era of the Roman Empire before Emporer Constantine became a Christian. What god you believed in, whether it was Jehovah (Judaism), Allah (Islam), or Jesus Christ (Christianity), was more important than what race you were.
2) As slaves, historically, depending on if you are talking about European history, or the history of the Roman Empire, will depend on what the attitude towards slavery, thus POC, was. The Catholic Church issued a papal bull very early in medieval European history that said that black people were no better than cattle, therefore they had no actual legal status. This was in the early 1200s, I think. The Romans and the Moors, however, did treat slaves somewhat better. One example is that the Spanish, because of the Moors, allowed slaves to civilly sue their masters, which was evident even into Spanish control of colonies in the New World, when the Colonial period began during the Enlightenment. In Rome, slaves could earn their freedom via military service, and race actually did not matter, as both POC and whites, Slavs, were both held in slavery by the Romans. In the Byzantine Empire, really the Eastern Roman Empire, slaves were much more brown and dark brown people from Persia, rather than North Africa, because of the proximity to Islamic lands, given that the capital was the modern-day city of Istanbul, Turkey.
The point here is that I have never heard anyone say that POC were not present in medieval European history. What is the case, however, is that due to the status many African and Middle Eastern slaves had in first, Rome, and then later European countries, they were merely disregarded and not paid attention to, thanks in no small part to the papal bulls issued by the Roman Catholic Church.
Y'all remember skinny ghost?
Why not just decide the background and identity of your characters the way everything else is decided in DnD, roll a dice? A dice by its very nature cannot be biased.
well, because complete randomness isn’t inclusion either. everyone is affected by the environments and cultures they grew up in, and completely randomizing every character or every world-building aspect would make those things unrelated to each other instead of playing into and affecting each other narratively. like if there’s no other factors then a random dice roll to decide something every once in a while would be fine but that would actually probably be a really difficult way to build a setting or a character long term if you want their background to have any impact on their story
Interesting
For the algorithm ❤️
Sensitivity consultants... lol. Eugh
Wait... "sensitivity consultant" is a job?
Someone gets payed to say how not to offend people???
I COULD TOTALLY DO THAT
An origin story!
I honestly don’t really care about this topic I just find it funny how you connect the lgbtq+ community with sensitivity lol
I do not wish to be sensitive.
I wasn't going to watch this video because the reality of catering to an audience who gets offended by words is exhausting, but to help me better understand Brennan's worldview, it was good to, lest I remained ignorant of many things.
Regardless, our world today (specifically in the US), are no doubt easily offended. We are raising up children into their late 20s through 40s and they're still children in their minds.
Know these as a fact:
To be offended by something is a choice and a weakness.
To be so open-minded and inclusive of everything is folly.
And love does not mean accepting everything as is.
It's June. So called "pride month" - which I will never celebrate - as the lgbt community has shown itself to be the most intolerant, bigoted, discriminatory, and hypocritical community in the world. Doesn't mean each individual person in the community sucks, but the community as a whole: Basically equivalent to the toxicity of League of Legends, For Honor, COD, and Brawlhalla combined. Best way to describe that as a gamer myself. xD
I will actively make my games extremely racist and homophobic to balance out the universe
I love Brennan, Dimension 20 and the whole schtick. But wanted to bring up something that never sat well with me, specifically in Fantasy High. Here Brennan gives a nice talk about inclusivity, which is great and very important to evolving story telling, but in Fantasy High (spoilers) one of the big villains was very obviously a full blown stereotype of strict, orthodox, christians. They were hateful, homophobic, constantly described as thick headed, stupid or otherwise bigoted. When the heroes were fighting him, Brennan wouldn't stop to give the guy any character other than "angry, hateful, and stupid".
A major plot point of one of the PCs was to discover how terrible this religion was and break free. I fucking loved that part of the campaign, Kristen was 100% my favorite character. But, it left me feeling like the show was saying "exclusivity and stereotyping is fine, as long as it's against white people or christians." Idk if this was ever addressed by Brennan, but hearing this schpeel about them putting effort into making their worlds inclusive and free of harmful stereotypes while one of their biggest stories is ripe with them rubs me the wrong way.
Now, don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed Fantasy High and think that Brennan is a very enjoyable storyteller. But the heavy-handed "evil christianity" parallel with little to no redemption for the followers of psuedo christianity outside of just switching religions felt hypocritical. There's 0 chance Dimension 20 would've gone through the same story arc if Helio was based off of anything other than christianity. I haven't seen all of their other series though, so if there's an arc based off of stereotyping any other religion, let me hear it.
In short, feels like the protection from hateful stereotypes is only for people who aren't a majority in the USA.
A crown of Candy, which this interview was about, is also involving a religion and opposing it. I’d highly recommend it because I believe D20 evolved a lot since the early days of Fantasy High. I don’t find it problematic to dunk on the biggest and most powerful religion in the world. On the contrary, big organizations with so much power should be regularly criticized lest we forget they don’t own our souls ;)
@@geek_peek Let me preface this with an "I'm not Christian". But in a different comment you stated that it's fine to portray a member of a group as evil as long as you also portray some members as good. In Fantasy High the Christian analogues were either super evil, or misguided. There was some framing the threat as an extremist sect, but then there was also displaying the everyday supporter of Helios family as being perfectly fine with this crazy cult. Hey, maybe that was a disconnect between brennan and Kristen's player though.
In any case "dunking" on any religion or systematic set of beliefs is still stereotyping and portraying a group of people as less than others. I'm personally fine with it in writing, negative parallels to the real world can be interesting, that doesn't mean the extremely negative portrayal of christianity in fantasy high isn't hypocritical. Even the jesus analogue (Helios) was a terrible bro dude, imagine if the buddha or muhammad's counterpart was portrayed as a total scumbag?
For such a hateful analogy they could've done with making the links to christianity less one to one and stereotypical.
I would like to watch Crown of Candy, for despite my criticism of D20's inclusivity within Fantasy High, I enjoyed the show overall.
@@EpixGaminginc let me know what you think of A Crown of Candy when you watch it - it’s very Game of Thrones’s like ;)
In America, the analogue to where Fantasy High is set, there is a particular brand of Christianity that presents itself as exclusively hateful and cultish - white American evangelicalism. It's almost everywhere, especially in rural communities, though it solely populates itself among white communities. When I watch Fantasy High, _that_ is what I think of as the analogue to that particular branch of Helio-ism that Kristen was a part of, because that's how white *American* evangelicals think -- they're homophobic, they're racist, and they're deeply, deeply afraid of everything but themselves. Of the many many cultures in the world, few are defined by the simple idea of that "We are everything that they're not" -- their definition of what they are is that they are not what "the other" of their community is. And white American Christian evangelicals follow that line of thinking until the bitter end -- and frankly, when the entire community is rotten to the core, it shouldn't be an issue to point out that the community is rotten to the core. I've seen this complaint from many people a lot, and I think it comes from a fundamental idea that you must respect _every_ religion, even when they don't respect you, when that's not the case. When a culture like white American Christian evangelicalism derives its pleasure and worship from the hatred of others, you are well within your rights to critique and even hate it. In fact, you should, because tolerance of the intolerant -- of hateful people -- only ever gives them the space to be hateful people.
fantasy high season 1 is full of generalizing and stereotyping. the nerdy character is an incel, the halflings are all criminals and anti-cop, the jock/bully is secretly gay, etc.
so much wasted money on useless consultants
Useless? How so? And please mention if you’re part of a marginalized group in your answer. Thanks!
I find this speech about sensitivity kind of hypocritical since a large part of the character arcs of multiple characters in Crown of Candy is the fact that the queen's wife died so she had to marry a man and have children. "Sure, representation is important to me, that's why I buried my gays! :)"
Did you even watch the fights between Caramelinda and Amethar? Can you not feel how righteously angry and cold she is whenever she walks in the room?
Making a character that unlikeable… and still COMPLETELY understandable and even relatable… is NOT the “bury your gays” trope because it wasn’t gratuitous. It was a major plot point with several twists and turns influencing Candian succession.
@@emilysmith2965 It absolutely is the Bury Your Gays trope, given that her backstory kills off her wife. Which is killing a gay character. Which is Bury Your Gays.
@@ravenfrancis1476 That just feels like stripping the complexity of death from characters because they're gay. "Don't kill off gay characters" is so ridiculously limiting for no reason.
@@EpixGaminginc It's not ridiculous, because we're not at a point representationally where we can afford to tell stories about queer deaths. It'll take decades, if not centuries, to really balance it out in terms of representation. And if you can't have complex stories without death you shouldn't be writing LGBT+ characters.
Representation is more than just "acknowledging we exist and then doing nothing beyond that to prevent falling into harmful stereotypes"
I would say maybe this would be a valid argument if in other seasons of dimension 20 there wasn’t phenomenal LGBTQ+ representation. Even in Crown of Candy Liam is Ace. Simply, none of the characters at the table decided to be gay. and Brennan adding in some cursory gay NPC’s for no cause would feel contrived. It made sense for the queen’s wife to be dead story wise bc it highlighted the straining royal politics of the world.
im yet to see inclusivity with a person missing a limb for example as one of the main cast, or somebody thats actually grotesque, but no, you just include an array of sexual preferences, bam done, inclusive
There could definitely be better disabillity rep (especially physical disabilities), but I really fail to see what exactly your point is? I dont understand what 'actually grotesque' means. Attraction and beauty are pretty subjective in their own right. and one of the PC's in a game was a literal new york city rat, and there are multiple examples of characters who are fantasy creatures of some form or another. Also, what do you mean 'just include'? They have characters of color, characters of different gender and sexual backgrounds. Their identities arent always central to their stories, but they dont have to be. The normalization of these circumstances are a step in the right direction and are, inclusive
Why the hell would I care about sensitivity in my fantasy campaing? Sensitive stories where you cannot explore offensive and dangerous ideas, where you need to be in a safe space are worthless in my opinion.
What do you mean? Do you think a story can't be dangerous and offensive without being Racist or Homophobic? Also, if you and your players are ok with a story that cleaves to those ideas, good for you! That's your call around your table. Dimension 20 is a TV show and needs to respect its varied audience.
@@geek_peekI see offensive and dangerous ideas as mutually exclusive with sensitivity in general, by definition. A story cannot be offensive and thus explorative if people don't find it offensive, i.e. if some level of sensitvity is not being ignored. Sexism and racism are merely examples of such, I don't usually include them in my games. But for example, I do include hardcore opression and slavery, like brutal, in some games, which I am sure wouldn't be considered sensitive. One of the ways people deal with these topics could literally be RPGs, where we can explore and live them together. People find all sorts of things offensive, and trying to appeal to them could potentionally lead to softer and softer stories on the long run. I don't mind D20 being sensitive, but I felt it is suggested by this video every story should be - maybe that is a wrong take from me.
@@Wickerless there is a difference between "Exploring offensive ideas (such as racism, queerphobia, class, etc.)" and "Being offensive"
a story that explores difficult topics can still be sensitive and claiming that "exploring offensive and dangerous ideas" is incompatible with being sensitive and not offensive towards the people consuming and experiencing your art betrays a great lack of creativity
@@Wickerless you could still tell a story about slavery and oppression and be sensitive to certain groups that might feel hurt. For example, one of the good guy NPCs could be black. One of your PCs could be a POC. Maybe some other ideas that a racial sensitivity consultant could suggest.
And if you want to include LGBTQ+ in this story, you make sure that some characters are not straight or maybe not cis. Where does sensitivity matter? When you add a character who is gay but it’s the only bad guy in the campaign. Do you see where I’m leading with this? Your games could be as brutal as you and the players want them. Making sensitivity decisions doesn’t always have to mean a less powerful story.
I’m sure someone like B Dave Walters (who was a sensitivity consultant for Fantasy High) could give you great examples. This guy’s stories are rad as hell!
If you don't care, why did you watch a TH-cam video with it in the title? Kinda cringe bro
Love the crew hate pride months sooooo
I think all this over focusing on people’s “identity” is what’s actually and ironically generating toxicity. Have more than a personality than your race or sexual orientation people.
It’s not “personality.” Coming out of the closet is about revenge for the decades of being told you shouldn’t even exist.
Choke on that trauma for even one day of your privileged life and see if it doesn’t “influence your personality.”
@@emilysmith2965 That's how you justify people hating you, that's the cycle of violence. You assumed something because they assumed something. Assumptions are the mother of all screw ups. Yet the person that goes too far is always in the wrong because they clearly knew better because of their trauma.
Stay mad
Or you can just call everyone who does not like it a toxic fan.
Who doesn't like what?
@@elbruces Insensitive storytelling. If someone is offended by it, you can just call them toxic fans who hate representation, even if they are from the group your piece of media is supposed to represent.
But it's not the creator of the story that would call them that. Have you ever seen someone from the cast or actual crew of the show slam a fan for not liking how something is portrayed in D20? They all understand that not every comment deserves a reply and that people are entitled to their opinion whether they're positive or negative.
Even if you invest in a sensitivity consultant with "receipts" like B Dave Walters, there are always going to be people who don't like it. That's human nature and it's completely fine. At least you did what you had to do as a self-respecting public TV show.
@@geek_peek Paul Feig called people who did not like his Ghostbusters movie sexist.
@@schwarzerritter5724 does it matter? We’re talking about D20’s creators and crew. Not every creator in existence is going to be accepting just as not every person is going to like a show.
That’s just how people are. This video is focused on what we can learn about sensitivity in storytelling from Brennan, not from anyone else.
Fail. Talking about sensitive on eggshells and using the word "barbaric" which is one of the oldest ethnic slurs in existence. You shouldn't need sensitivity experts or consultants or anything like that. There will be villainous people in any heroic fantasy setting. Don't be overly sensitive about the fact people will be evil, bigoted, or cruel in the setting. The key is to frame it as a moral wrong while as the storyteller or actor you don't say things like "barbaric" in a negative light. The other isn't being bad for being the other. Doing bad things doesn't make you a bad person unless you have malicious intentions and/or refuse to change. And holding the idea idea that you are superior as a person for not having the perceived failings or weaknesses that you see in others is delusional and inherently hostile. It's okay to expect better out of someone who is doing or has done something harmful to other people, but don't hold them in contempt unless they aren't open to dialog or refuse to change. Of course someone engaged in a violent crime or open warfare that doesn't surrender needs to be stopped one way or the other. And it's natural to be outraged in the moment and have contempt then. But you should be able to contain and control that aggression, be capable of accepting prisoners, and merciful with defeated enemies. Those are heroic virtues. Looking down at other people you think are less enlightened is not a heroic virtue. It comes from the same place as racism, religious intolerance, and homophobia.
This is a video about inclusive story telling, you can have a villain be villainous without having to drawn on real world bigotry (that viewers of the show or people at the table might have experienced) to communicate that.
plus to say not liking bigoted people "comes from the same place as racism, religious intolerance, and homophobia" is very comical to imply, given how everything you mentioned other than not liking bigoted people, at one point or another, lead to someone being killed.
@@cola8481 I didn't say not liking bigoted people, I said use terms like barbaric is the same. The mentality that some people are good civilized folk and others are subhuman barbarians has lead to genocide in real life. You should read more and not put words in peoples mouths.
@@cola8481 Yet what is the villain being villainous about? Since villany is subjective to claim a person is such without any sort of "bigotry" is simply a lie since they're targing somebody, some place or something. They NEED a reason beside comedically burn the whole world because I can type of evil. That's boring, I mean it works especially if you plan out how campy the evil is. Like they wake up and just strike somebody down dead.
Which idiot told them that there were POC in MEDIEVAL Europe? Late 1500 early 1600 sure, there were ships that could actually visit other parts outside of your sea, but medieval Europe?! Yeah, i truly wish to see dated example of something before 1400 that has POC in them. Mind you, Medieval era spans from 5th century to 15nth century, which means 400 to 1400 years. I am very curious how someone will explain how renewal (Humansim/Renesanse) happened centuries before because people were able to transverse seas and "rediscover" Helenistic art and architecture centuries before.
But that being said, peeps... Its fantasy. If you want to put a used condom as a PC do it, no one is stopping you. If you want to include POC do it, again no one is stopping you. Just make sure to have continents a bit closer and tied by land if you want to make it "realistic".
Here you go :)
twitter.com/medievalpoc/status/1099774201169350663?s=21&t=dIAbkos2auJmKhnQ_ExepA
Africa and Europe are still connected by land which also happens to be my home of Israel :)
BTW, Jews are also mostly POC. I, myself, am half Yemenite. It’s only Ashkenazi Jews that are truly white presenting ;)
I mean I’m not a history major, but based on the fact that there were absolutely Black and West Asian people living in and traveling to and from Ancient Greece and Rome, how is it inconceivable that POC could have existed in feudal Europe?
@@geek_peek thank you ❤️ I'll be looking at that
People want to pretend that rare exceptions to the rule, since obviously traders, merchants, and mercenaries will be from all over the world if they can get there, and get paid, will make sure they're "there" but that'll be used as an excuse to over represent them and put them in roles they literally don't belong in. I have an ancient setting, and the only time foreigners are present, are when they're clearly of that social class. Traders, Adventures, Rich Tourists who can afford it, and since it's table top, obviously the players who are from all over the world.
@@daphne-bai I can understand that English might not be your first language, but we can't say absolutely for that far in past. For example, if you say Asian in Helenistic Greece they would point at Persia and Turkey which is definitely not Asian by our current meaning.
Also let's not mix things together, shall we. Alexander the Great conquered new world at the end of 4th century and he did it by foot not by fleet. That alone means that ability to build ships that could transverse seas at that time was not done (in Europe tho) otherwise Mr Great would attack with fleet of ships.
For example Ibn Battuta, one of first explorers that tied African continent and Asian continent did so in Medieval time, but only the east part of Europe and only in 1301-ish. Why wouldn't he go into Italy or Greece?
Yes there were non Eroupen people in Europe but to say they were erased is almost idiotic. Not talking about the ultra small number of non Eroupen people in Europe is just treating history like the giant subject it is. You can only teach so much and getting the broad strokes is more important than mentioning the few non Eroupen people who were there.
Also for all the talk of sensitivity they still spent close to 10 minutes body shaming a male identified character who was just a jerk, not evil which is still not an excuse.
North Africans literally ruled Spain for 700 years bro
This is stupid, and why I don't allow normies to play D&D
Ok nogames
Why be sensitive in storytelling? What is the point? I say never deal with sensitivity shit or problem players, just let consequences come to them. Because (usually, at least I think so) a fantasy campaign or d&d campaign in general takes place in a time of struggle, it makes sense to make all of, or at least the majority of the NPCs extremely bigoted and paranoid. Hiring sensitivity consultants is like wasting your money on something: only Americans and idiot debils from the awful European countries do it.