Well, now that I've opened up this can of worms, tell me how many black people you've played RPGs with. Are there any playing in your current group? Scribble a little bit below and let the rest of the geekheads know.
I've been playing since the late 80s and live in the United Kingdom. I don't think I have ever played with a black person. About 15 years ago somebody I was explaining the hobby to said "i bet not many black people play that". I thought it was an odd thing to say but they were right in my experience and after that have felt it as something missing.
Most times when I’ve played with people of color it has been at conventions or online though pre-COVID I would always come across kids of color at the local gaming store playing a variety of geeky games.
One of my oldest friends GMs with a youth pastor at his church. They have several groups playing at once, and it still boggles my mind how much things have changed. I wonder if you think that online interactions will make this more normalized. Collaborative storytelling is a really cool hobby that i think a lot of people could enjoy, and i nerd out about it to pretty much anyone that will listen to me. Granted, i think about getting kids and even my mother in law to play, so maybe my goals are a bit lofty.
There are two black guys that play and run games at a local game store for Adventurers League. They are about 17-18. Good guys, lots of enthusiasm. But no it's not common, it seems to be a cultural difference, for the most part. I think the internet has helped some, but sadly not enough.
I honestly have no idea how many black people I've played RPGs with, because it's not something I ever kept track of. I only paid attention if they wanted to play, and I've run enough games at demos, game days, and conventions to have played with all kinds of people . . . who wanted to play.
I owned a gaming store in the early 00s. The store was in a southern Georgia college town. We had a dnd group that was all black. It didn't start out that way. I DMed for the group for a while and it has 3 black guys, a Hispanic guy, a mixed guy and me a white guy. I left the group cause of other responsibilities conflicting and another black guy joined and the Hispanic guy dropped to play Magic more. The guys in the group bonded over there love of anime. No one at their homes accepted their rpg hobby. It got to the point that they would leave their books at my shop to not be hassled about it at home. I've never seen an rpg table of all black kids since. They were the greatest guys. My store was a haven of sorts. It didn't matter to anyone who you were outside of those doors. Inside you were one of us.
I concur, D&D should be a safe space for everyone. Whatever you are outside the doors doesn't matter at the table. Like any other form of entertainment, we play to escape the real world, not live it some more.
@@Oakbeast But there's more to Tabletop RPGs than just Fantasy and D&D. There's Sci-Fi and Modern for instance. Wizards of The Coast even had a D20 Modern & Sci-Fi. None of the groups I've been part of ever sought or excluded anyone because of race, that I am aware of. Though the fact that you had that is REALLY cool! I've never been part of anything like that. Gaming can really bring people together in ways that others can't. To build friendships and forge new connections. There's even been ways people have used in Mental Health to help build Confidence, Overcome Social Anxiety, etc.
The first time I saw Pondsmith, (the creator of Cyberpunk) I did a triple-take. It is rare to see a black man at a game table, but to have one create an entire genre of RPG!? I was blown away.
Cyberpunk 2020 is an amazing system that has captured my heart. He made an amazing game system that just but rushes you with visceral violence and a need to socialize to survive.
It's also probably the best system out there in my opinion. I've quite a few systems and it's so well rounded and so versatile. You can run almost any kind of game you want within the system. It's absolutely brilliant.
I GMed his other game, The Witcher, it's a little complex and very deadly, but I love rpgs with complex rules, they make me feel like the creators really used his heart and soul in it (in fact my absolute favourite game in Legend of the Five Rings, one of the most complex and hard to learn rpg that I know).
As a black high school student in high school in the 80’s going to a private schools that had an RPG club was how I found out about them. Even though I was interested in them and friendly with people who played them, they thought my interest was not true, I was black, à good athlete and popular. It wasn’t until after college that I actually got involved in the hobby by chance. I meet a person at just duty while playing cards which we bonded over, talked about the scout science fiction fantasy series I enjoyed and eventually we became friends and he invited me to game with him and his group. It didn’t work out with his group but we ended up creating a separate group and I’ve been playing since then. Mostly now I GM and still love RPG’s
But you do realize that being an athlete was more of a reason to not be invited, than being a black guy? Most likely they assumed you will ridicule them for it.
"I'm probably going to say something in this video that's going to offend some people..." Honesty usually does. Thank you for your honesty, and for your courage in openly talking about issues that aren't easy, or comfortable.
Good video. Throughout high school AND college and even now, our entire table was all Black. I have been playing ttrpgs since 1979. I am from Chicago. At present, I live in Atlanta. Keep up the great work.
@@RPGElite Another Chicago native here. Started in high school (early 80's) and still going strong. Entire table was all black friends, back in the day, but more recently our virtual online table has been a rainbow of roleplayers. Great content!
St louis Here We had Folks in Our games that were Black back in the day and even though We moved a part over time We still get together and Play online/ We all lived in the Inner City and played as an escape Thats just how I think We kept out of trouble and kept our sanity. We played it all too D&D, Rifts etc But You make some great points and I remember My BF Who is Black when He asked His Parents for books for His Birthday they referred to D&D as that "White Kids" game. Critical Role is sad Tokenism is real.
It was so frustrating growing up as the only mixed person in my family and constantly having my interests judged as evidence as what "side I was on". I'd just talked in therapy yesterday about your third reason, about how my interest in innocuous things like fantasy books and TTRPGs were used as evidence that I was "too white". Which is just so insulting and people say it without even thinking twice.
It's genuinely sad such thing happens. BTW the fact being "too white" is considered as an insult is a solid proof "BlaCk PeOpLe CaN't Be RaCiSt" is total BS and damaging to black people themselves.
Honestly, it sucks that any action can be categorized as a "Side" thing. I mean just do wat you do, it ain't matter wat side ur on, it shouldn't define ur side either
Yeah man that s*** sucks I hate I hate those f****** stereotype b******* oh I can't eat certain foods or all I can't like certain sports it's f****** dumb dude I f****** hate that b*******.
After all the years of being called a burned cracker, this video has given me a little bit of comfort. Thank you brother for making this video. I made sure to share it everywhere I could.
I've never heard the term "burned cracker". Is that specific to a biracial or black person "acting" white? Just trying to understand. I'd just consider you a friend or player. :-)
@@jamesflanagan3086 Yep that's pretty much it. I played d&d, magic the gathering, drew anime, and wrote campaigns for other ttrpgs most of my high school career. Because of that, and my other nerdy tendencies, I was basically treated like the red headed stepchild of my hood. Even if I was darker than most of them combined. Don't get me started on the "that's the devil's work" aspect of living with black grandparents and loving d&d lol.
@@jamesflanagan3086 The fact that people asociate being black as hood gangsters, drug dealers and rap music and if you are not involved into that as a black person you are a failure really tells you that society is at a low point.
There was a minister on the radio the other day defending the hobby in light of satanic panic and stuff saying he played it with his son and it was a great way to develop team work, empathy, improvisation, dealing with different situations. I totally respect anyone who speaks there mind. We all have them and like you say everything will just be ignorance unless we allow ourselves to be heard. There's good and bad in every field
As a black man that's been DM'ing since highschool I wish I could have given this video two thumbs up. You hit the nail on the head, great video from start to finish. The wind up had me cringing for impact but you killed it.
I remember when a major metal musician 'Lemmy' kilmister got an agony aunt style mail from a black fan. He was a kid whose black parents didn't understand his love of metal music and was being treated poorly as a result. Lemmy got upset, saying that if people can't accept the things you like, they're not your friends. It's really hard to grow up loving something that you'll be ostracised for. It's hard to get involved in something like that when there is no one in your direct community who enjoys that hobby. You don't have that direct experience with it. I became a dnd guy when normie group of friends ostracised me, I then found a bunch of nerdy guys who wanted to play dnd. I had no thoughts about it either way and fell in love with the community.
I thought of Lemmy too. That was a great response he had. Don't let other people restrict what you like (at least as long as it's harmless fun, like music or games). All hobbies should be accessible for everyone.
@@TrentTheWanderer yeah some said the same thing about Saville at first have seen him carry a nazi flag onto the stage with him as in I was there I don't care what you say bro
My brother and I are both mixed, and we grew up with a lot of nerdy interests - which naturally means we’ve been accused of ‘acting too white’ when we get into nerd stuff and ‘pretending to act black’ when we get into stuff that isn’t dominated by white culture. It’s so frustrating, and it definitely kept me away from TTRPGs for a long time - I didn’t want to pick up another habit that was supposedly only for white men. Now that I’ve been playing since 2016 (started with Pathfinder but my current group has been playing D&D 5E for the past three years) I’m consistently the only black player in every ttrpg game I’ve played, and I’m often the only woman at the table too, so I still get looked at strangely sometimes. It doesn’t stop me from playing anymore but it gets SO exhausting sometimes. Seeing people like Aabria get to DM for Critical Role, even if I also don’t watch it, gives me hope that eventually we’ll see more black players in the coming years, who don’t get told they’re trying to act white just because they want to play a game they haven’t tried before.
9:19. I agree with this 3,000. I started playing D&D in 2nd grade. In my experience the only people who ever told me black people shouldn't play RPGs were people who didn't play RPGs. The TTRPG community has never been the barrier. I agree that the problem was more from the black community than from the TTRPG community. Also white, non-TTRPG players were always surpirsed that I didn't find the TTRPG community horribly racist. I always when I was a kid from 2-6 my campaign group was 2 black guys, 2 white guys, and a chinese guy, and I was like we get along fine and go to conventions and everything. Non TTRPGers were the ones freaked ou tby that, not the TTRPG community at all..
My friend, who is black, just told me he's never heard of "this nerd stuff" and now he's played two sessions and excited about continuing. He brought a work friend, also black, who's been playing since mid 2000s. I've been playing for 30 years and I am regularly surfing TH-cam for ttrpg channels and occasionally POC channels specifically. That's how I found Ember Moon's channel. I've seen DOZENS of ttrpg content by white creators with less than 400 subscribers but today is the first day I found your channel. It's easier for me to find a foreign language ttrpg page than it is a black ttrpg youtuber. I can't tell you why exactly but that's what it is.
“It's easier for me to find a foreign language ttrpg page than it is a black ttrpg youtuber.” I could not stop laughing when I read this, mostly because it's a true thing. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don't think there's a thing wrong with Caucasian dudes doing their thang in the TTRPG space. More power to them. I am thoroughly in their corner if they are putting out decent content like Seth Sorkowsky and WASD. However, it just punctuates my point in the video. Glad to be one of the first. God willing, going to be here for a good minute.
My black coworker asked me about it because he saw D&D being played on Big Bang Theory. Asked if one are there people really like Sheldon in the nerd culture and Is that what all D&D was about.
I'll be another one. This man inspired me; I've loved TTRPG's for a long time and watched as other people told me how black people feel about TTRPG's. That ends today.
Mike Pondsmith and R. Talsorian Games He created Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk Red, The Witcher He also created Fuzion with many games like Artesia, Sengpku, Dragon Ball Z, so.many more
I’m a young black person and from the moment I’ve learned about dnd I’ve been loud about my interest. When I moved in with with my older relatives it became a problem because they just couldn’t wrap there head around it. That was the first time I kinda ran into that problem. I feel like I’ve been more gifted then others after watching your video or maybe it’s just because of the generation I’m in everytime I play dnd there’s always been 1 or 2 other black people. In college the table was 3 black people 1 Latino and a white person. When in high school it was two white two black and currently. My party I DM for is atleast one person of every race. I feel like or rather know what your saying is true but I can see things are looking up.
I think part of that is just the massive mainstream acceptance of Geeky Hobbies. Not to mention greater push for Representation IN our Hobbies as well! Like if you talked about Anime back in the 2000s vs 2010s you'd see a noticeable difference. An while I haven't personally been part of gaming with many African Americans, I DO know some who do Tabletop RPGs, we just haven't been in the same groups together. In part because of my disinterest in D&D and a lot of Fantasy type games. More into Sci-Fi.
@@TheAyanamiRei One of the more interesting situations is RTalsorian Games. Mike, the lead designer, and (AFAICT) owner, is one of the best known black designers in the industry... and yet, he's written and released probably the most white game I've ever run... Castle Falkenstein. The only dark skins visible in the core are Unseelie Fae. If Mike won't represent, who will?
@@neurocidesakiwi So, no Trek, no Dr Who, no TimeMaster, No Feng Shui for you? Too bad. Time Travel is a great story hook. My second group just started playing Feng Shui (2e), and it's time-travelling chop-socky Hong-Kong Movies style action... The Radio-play reference should work for anyone over 50; they were still a going concern in the 70's and early 80's... "Improvisational radio-play with randomizers and rules" is a very apt description of "Theater of the Mind" style play. It's been my go-to description of RPGs since about 1984. My generation is probably one of the last to listen to them on radios...
You actually gained another follower because of how you handled this topic sir. If more people discussed topics like this with the same care and intelligence that you did, I believe our world would be in much better shape. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your future content.
"I'm going to lose subscribers with this one." Maybe, but you gained one here! I'm latino and I don't much like being tokenized. It seems like some in the hobby don't want to talk about this so I'm glad others out there are.
@@RPGElite As a wise man once said: "I have a dream that one day men will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Amen to that. One day that dream will come true. But I don't think that will happen before the Lord God himself makes it happen. It's a tool that has benefitted evil for far too long for it to just... go away. As the book says: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and rulers in the darkness." It's a spiritual battle, the effect on TTRPGs is probably just collateral damage.
+1 subscriber here as well. This video just popped up in my feed (first time I've seen this youtuber) and I found his arguments compelling and well thought out.
I've been running RPGs for 30 years and I, unfortunately, lived through the satanic panic. My good friend who is a black man and man I consider to be my brother could not play with us because his brothers would pick on him verbally and physically if they caught wind. Which is sad because I feel like he would have enjoyed himself immensely. Everything you touched on here is 100% truth. Having grown up in what's called the 'deep south' it was pretty damn terrible to be an RPG player all around.
I was left utterly disappointed after the satanic panic. I legit hoped an actual demon, like maybe one of Tzeentch, would pop into being bit nope, just boring, basic arithmetics that even a toddler would find simplistic and a whole host of extrovert assholes.
I am happy to see this getting addressed. Cooperative storytelling is a human species thing. We all have ancestors who participated in this art. It needs to be inclusive to the max. Magic happens at the table when we are in the game, role playing, and every person deserves to have the opportunity to play. I firmly believe in the intimacy of a good gaming group. It is a safe place, or at least should be.
I agree with almost all of what is said here, but I think that some groups should not be a safe space. Let me explain. Some players are comfortable with more mature themes and circumstances. This includes sex, bigotry (in game...like ancient gender roles) and ingame racism (orcs hatred of dwarves in many stories) and violence. And this is fine, if every player is onboard.
I'm a youth librarian who is trying to bring more RPG programing into my library. A lot of my teens are black, or non-white. So I really want to make sure that what we're doing is welcoming and fun for everything. This video helped me a lot to think about what I can do. Thank you.
As a fellow librarian, the hardest thing to overcome with bringing RPG and games in the library is the colleagues and hierarchy. It could be donne quite easily, but each time they make it a chore.
I’m planning on working with my local library down the street this year. I'll use the channel and this video specifically among the others to let them see that this is a great outlet for all ethnicities and they can be a catalyst for something great in the community for these kids. It's all part of the agenda. 😉 Happy gaming. 🙂👍🏿
As a mixed race person growing up in Japan, I have felt discrimination and a sense of not belonging (more so during my school years). It had positive and negative aspects but the overall effect is you are never allowed to forget it. TTRPG and to a lesser extent board games were the one area I found where a group of people came together without any of that. It didn't matter who you were , where you were from or what you had going on in life, we were all welcome and once a game started, we were all other people anyway and I felt really connected because of that.
It is a human and extremely common human emotion to feel that of not belonging to a group. The majority of white people have felt this among other white people. This isn't a race thing, this is a human thing.
@@cartoonhanks1708 I know it can happen for a myriad of reasons. I was directly talking about how my race impacted that. It's like going to a school where everyone is buff and you are some wimp, yeah you are never going to forget it and people are not going to let you.
@@cartoonhanks1708 No. I think it * can * be a race thing. Even the fact that is is realllllllllllllllllllly hard to find minis with black faces, black hair. Of course, eveyrone can feel like an outsider. But race is sometimes the prime factor.
Gained a subscriber here, as I found this video interesting and you didn't go the direction I expect. That said, while I agree the "Satanic Panic" took heavy root in the Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches, I feel you need to remember that the single largest bump didn't come from any book or religious author, but from the 60 Minutes special on the "Satanic Panic" that aired in 1986 when the average viewership of that show was 20 million (or roughly 10% of the population). In other words, much of the Satanic Panic was pushed by the media, who have long since pretended they never did anything like that and it was all those religious fanatics...
Sure...but that was D&D. An I'm getting sick and tired of everyone pretending that D&D has been the ONLY game in town. Like there was an old version of Tabletop RPG for Starcraft for heaven's sake! To say nothing of MULTIPLE versions of Star Wars. There was a Firefly RPG. D20 Modern & Future. etc. Heck there was one for Lord of The Rings which had Christian Elements like with Gandalf. My parents hate DnD, but think THAT game is okay. There are LOTS of different options for Non-Supernatural Tabeltop RPGs.
@@TheAyanamiRei Certainly, but D&D is the grandfather of the genre. It still being alive and prospering means everyone else, inevitably, has to be compared to it. It's the baseline for RPGs. It's like if Rome was still around today and relevant - it would be damn hard talking about geopolitics without mentioning the empire that ruled most of Europe and laid the groundwork for literally every single Western civilization. Heck, to some extent that's the role the USA plays in world politics and it IS hard to talk global geopolitics without mentioning the US. Mind you, as someone involved in the process of developing a TTRPG, I very much understand your frustration, but reality and expectations are what they are.
I needed to see this. I hated the idea of being public with d&d as I'm not woke with social issues, I'm just a black dude who wanna run/play in adventures with my friends/homies
Your #3 is spot on. I went to an elementary school that was about 75% black. I remember hearing kids say to each other “you trynna be white” when referring to things that should be normal for anyone- using grammar, doing homework, drawing/painting during recess (instead of playing sports). I can definitely see this notion playing out as adults in the rpg world. It is a n ignorant and poisonous kind of peer pressure that always bothered me.
@@revylokesh1783 its societal man. How many youtube channels you see like "first time listening to audioslave" like how tf you never heard of audioslave bruh your 30
@@kaiceecrane3884 probably haven't heard a lot of "white music" lead singer is unbelievably talented btw check out alice in chains too, the old stuff before their singer died.
Love how you presented this topic. As a Latino myself, I found it strange that this hobby isn’t widely accepted. I especially like how you brought up the black American culture. Great stuff and gained a sub from me!
I have thought the same -- TTRPG seems to be just a 'white' thing because others don't seem that interested which is fine by me... But I get very irritated when some minorities complain about the 'lack of representation' in TTRPGs. Hey guys, you are not interested. We are doing everything we can to be open and inclusive, but if you would prefer to do other things what can we do??? There are not that many professional white basketball players... is that a problem??? How about curling (shoving big stones around on the ice in the freezing cold using brooms to clear the way towards something or other -- that's all I know about curling)... not a lot of minorities represented there... is that a problem? Let's just all have fun doing whatever we like.
I subbed because of your honesty. I've been in this hobby since 1979. Started playing in the dead of night stuck out in a foreign desert waiting for our ride out. I can count on one hand the number of black or brown people who played tabletop rpg's. Across these decades, conflicts, changes.
So this video got randomly recommended to me by the Algorithm. Complete banger of a video. As a hispanic who was lucky enough to be part of an RPG group who come from various cultures this topic is real AF. Thanks for talking about it.
Thank you so much sir! I’m a white college student who’s been looking to get my black friends and coworkers into TTRPGs and it’s so great to see expert advice on this subject. Edit: A lot of what you’re saying really hits home, I’ve had black friends leave games “because it’s not black”, had friends stop expressing their nerd sides because their parents tell them “it’s not what black kids do” and had a friend who was told “he just wasn’t black enough” when he acted smart. You’re right though that there’s not much *I* can do to make more black peoples play ttrpgs, because ultimately they have to pick in up themselves, and all anyone else can do is make them feel welcome
We gotta take this one person at a time. It's like the adage asks: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Eventually, it will get eaten. If they don’t want anything to do with tabletop RPGs, move on. If they continue to mislabel and malign, move on. Screaming at them with ad hominem attacks - which is how far too many people like to handle others who don’t think like them - is just an infantile way of saying I don’t like the fact you’re an individual and don't think like me. Those are TWs not worth the effort. Move on.
Just a perspective of a black kid who grew up in a predominantly white area… I was a always top or near the top of my classes at school. I can tell you I got a lot more crap from my white peers about “wanting to be white” than I did my black peers. I’m not saying black people didn’t say those things either, but I wouldn’t doubt your black friends also got crap doing nerdy stuff from all sides. You may want to think if stuff you said or stuff you didn’t defend them against may have turned them off. I used to play RPGs with a groups of white kids in HS and they would make occasional bigoted jokes at my expense and I interpreted it as “oh, this is a white person thing”.. so I left.
You're friends who refused to play because "it's not Black" are racist. The same would apply to a person who referenced their ethnic alignment as a reason to not play would also be racist. You're Black friends would play a game where they were gang members selling drugs, attacking elderly Asian women and shooting at innocent people?
@@duacot6633 that’s not racist. It’s bigoted. Racism has to do with thinking one race is superior to another. Like if a white person says hip hop is inferior to metal or punk because the culture of the black and brown people is too “ghetto”, or white musicians are more talented because they play instruments.
A black woman at my work was asking me about DnD the other day and she had that same deer in the headlights look in her eyes as I tried to explain it to her. But I may have to send her to this channel. She seemed actually interested to know about it, but she didn’t seem to be a “nerdy” type person, so there was a pop culture disconnect. I got her with the “it’s the game the kids played on Stranger Things.” Anyway it was a good video, it was a perspective I hadn’t really considered.
As I watched this I was wondering if stranger things had done anything for getting more black kids involved since one of the members was black and it's so mainstream
I always explain it as an interactive story telling game. There's a guy who sets the scene, and other people are the main characters. They build a story together. That's really what it's about to me. Most people have played those party whodunnit games like Mafia or Werewolf, you could say it's kinda similar to that as well, but cooperative.
Glad to see a brother speak on this. IMHO, I'm specifically glad more Black-majority groups are coming to the forefront PUBLICALLY - it's one thing to have Black-inclusiveness in private at-home games, but quite another to have public awareness of our Black nerd- and geekdom, especially for our youth to see! If you haven't already, check out Rivals of Waterdeep here on TH-cam. I also highly-recommend the Three Black Halflings podcast. Plenty of choices also available on Twitch these days as well.
If you ever get the chance, I strongly recommend that you attend a PAX event. Aside from just being a great gaming convention, it includes tabletop gaming in addition to VG gaming (PAX Unplugged is entirely for tabletop gaming), but also, there's a very strong emphasis of inclusiveness for all sorts of various marginalized people. They encourage diversity in race, gender/sexual expression, age, and both physical and mental ability. The general culture there is that gaming is for everyone, even you, yes, you.
The TH-cam algorithm thought I needed to see this today, and I'm thankful for it. Instantly subscribed. There are a lot of great TTRPG content creators but diversity and expanded perspective is sorely needed. Looking forward to watching more of your content!
Completely agree with this. I think the biggest thing is accessibility in our community. I wasn't introduced to them until my freshman year of college. I relate it to playing video games in the early 80's, as I was one of the few kids that had a video game system in my community. My friends looked at it as weird or "being white," but once I introduced them to it, they became enthralled. Within a few years, most of my friends had gotten a console, even though most games we played revolved around sports like football and basketball. Now that I'm grown with adult children, I see them playing RPG's with their friends that are black and it is more common and not frowned upon. We as a community need to be more forward in talking and introducing our people to new things. If they like it, cool, if not, cool.
Solid video and good points all around. Bringing up the "Satanic Panic" of the olden days made me remember my childhood where my mom didn't like me playing anything fantasy based, but scifi was acceptable given our family's love of Star Trek and Star Wars. Another factor, though it probably could be rolled into one of the points, is disposable income. Some folks just don't have the money to get game stuff. Now yeah we know as gamers it's really just a book and the true wallet killer would be the minis (lol) but neophytes wouldn't know that unless we guided them. Also the whole idea of roleplaying games being "a white person's game" is buried deep in the bones, hell even Weird Al puts light to that in White and Nerdy. Which is not shocking given how most fantasy based settings we know offhand are more or less "Let's put magic in European settings". Though I am heartened to see some kickstarters where people are trying to put together African or Middle East inspired settings out in some of these game systems. I mean RPGs should be shared storytelling, nice to see other stories and heroes getting in the blood of the culture. Though yeah a big hurdle for our kind, the gamers, is just how prevalent D&D has been and always will be. I mean for outsiders it's THE GAME people speak of even if here we are busting our butts playing stuff like Vampire or Mechwarrior or Mutants and Masterminds, etc.
@@AlbinoAxolotl1993 That's where I'm happy, if we can pivot the public mind from D&D to things like Pathfinder, we might get more folks in who would be less intimidated by the old stereotypes. Just a thought. It's a steady and slow travel but we can do it.
During my childhood, I wasn't allowed to watch harry Potter or Pirates of The Carribean because my parents thought the magic elements in the films were satanic.
I think it does a disservice to our communities that D&D is the only one that people are aware of. If someone is part of a Religious Household, they may not even be aware that there's ALTERNATIVES, ones that wouldn't offend their religious beliefs. I mean there's AT LEAST 3 different Star Wars Tabletop RPGs I think. I am sure there was one made for Star Trek as well. Firefly doesn't have any supernatural elements that I can remember. An yeah! Kickstarter has had some GREAT Tabletop RPGs with Diversity! As someone part of the LGBTQ+ I've been very happy to see that being so embraced. Not to mention Game Designers being more mindful of adding better Diversity Inclusion with Race as well as Gender & Sexuality.
I was reading a dnd book at the hospital where I was waiting to be seen for a bad infection and ingrown toenail. A big rather intimidating black woman started shouting at me how I was falling to corruption and playing The Devil's Game and going to hell in sin. It's not a matter of color, it's a matter of upbringing and culture. And irritates me no end. Some of my best friends in DnD come from all over. the game united us, and though we went our separate ways eventually, I still remember my group with love. And that's what it comes down to. Love.
How long ago did this happen? In the 80s, DnD had a bad reputation for being involved in the occult (along with heavy metal music, MTV, and so on....). Folks will believe whatever they want to believe, sad to say.
"It's not a matter of color, it's a matter of upbringing and culture." Culture, perhaps African American culture more so than any other, is so intertwined with color that you can hardly talk about one with out touching on the other. Culture largely dictates day to day experience and upbringing so I have to disagree with your statement, it is very much a matter of color.
while I doubt that this is something I will personally experience at some point, I've always had in mind my response if someone starts waving satanic panic stuff at me: "Listen, I spend most of my time in this game killing devils and demons, hunting down the undead. it's not about worshipping them, it's about fighting them. it's about being a hero." might not change any minds, but at least get it out there for those that need to hear it.
I think that's less about being black and more about being a certain flavor of religious. My mother was a sweet woman in a lot of ways, but until the day she died she believed that D&D was a game about summoning demons in spite of me being a DM and explaining the game to her. Any time she heard about me playing, she'd get sad. The problem was, she was a new mother at the start of the infamous "satanic panic" of the 80's and couldn't get past the propaganda, even decades later. If you can't tell by my profile picture, I and my mother are quite white.
When I played DnD back in the 80s, we just thought of playing and finding people who wanted to join us. I honestly never thought about the racial makeup of the group. I just wanted players in the group. Years later, I got a co worker interested in table top Sci Fi wargames because her and her husband were Sci Fi fans. They were Black but I considered them as potential gamers due to the shared love of all things Sci Fi. Thank you for the food for thought.
This has been my way of thinking also. I gladly accept anyone. If you happen to be a different gender or ethnicity that just adds to my enjoyement. We all have different life experiences that can add to a story/game.
Exactly. I never really cared for the race of my friends. I just saw them as my friends. Looking back they were from a vast variety of ethnic backgrounds.
@@keiths9281 It was if you didn't already have a gaming group. If your friends weren't religious, you could still get them to play. Thank God we have alot more systems to choose from and they don't involve spell casting. I could probably get those same religious types to play a game set in biblical times with the players trying to leave Egypt or avoid Romans. 😀😀
My God Man! This was really good. I'm Puerto Rican and it goes exactly the same way with most Hispanics I have met. Only difference my group growing up as kids was all Ricans until we went to college, where we met other people who played RPG's. I got hit with the 'why you acting white' bit as well. On Reason #4 My mom still says this about D&D and she's 60! She calls them 'Juegos del Diablo' (Games of the Devil). One reason I didnt hear you say is Socio-Economic Class - Where you are on the social ladder also limits your exposure to RPG's, you may play them on a computer console, but making the transition to TTRPG is on another level. When I started going to Con's I rarely saw other Black or Hispanic players, they were rarer than women at the tables, but I did see Asians. Today at cons I see more brown people but not anywhere near national demographic percentages. Your comment about the tokenism rings strong in many of the brown people I see in the various streams - they look uninvolved in the games, uninformed, ... like tacked on. Hoping this gets more views, but the YT algorithm is gonna bury you, the title doesn't fit the narrative being pushed.
The socio-economics is a good point. A lot of these books (particularly DnD, which imo became more about churning out quantity of products instead of quality references / supplements) get pricey pretty fast.
No way, man. I grew up poor as a church mouse. And had to literally walk miles one way to buy products, I grew up rural. The other kids I played with in the 80s were also poor. We saved, scrimped and bought products. And we played. But like other groups here, I tended to keep it to myself so I didn’t get picked on for being a nerd.
Guess what? The algorithm spat this at me today. Had to watch it. Some of it I knew, but not the background for it. Being a white female, some of the cultural stuff just isn't shared between us. I just didn't know just how different our cultures can be when we live in the same place.
Bro, same here. I'm Latino and I grew up with other Latinos telling me and my friends that we were "being white" for liking D&D and other games like that.
It's sucks to me as a white gamer that the black community turns it into a race thing. As a white guy in a very white area of America, I was just considered a loser nerd, and race didn't play into it. I can't imagine being seen as a race traitor of sorts just for wanting to kill orcs as an elf ranger, sheesh. A first generation American-Jamaican guy was at our Magic the Gathering session last night, cause he works with one of our players, and I loved explaining how the game worked and showing off all the cool cards, and he seemed really into it. I hope more barriers get taken down and more people can enjoy nerd hobbies. EDIT: Great vid, you earned a subscriber
I came for the clickbait, but stayed for the interesting discussion! Hopefully we can break down these barriers and suck more cultures etc into the TTRPG community so we can have more varied stories and story telling.
Bruh, blacks are a very small portion of the POPULATION let alone "hey are you into this niche hobby?" Hell I didn't know it was even around, same with card games
As a white guy, what I noticed from my own perspective was that the number of women / minorities involved in any RPG's exploded in the early 90's with "Vampire: The Masquerade" -- the first black gamer I ever met was at a Vampire LARP. I think that one game removed a lot of the stigma of RPG's and opened the floodgates for a whole new group of players entering the hobby.
I think it's more complex than that. By the early 90's some of the Stigma of being a nerd was going away. Guys like Gates and Jobs had made bank by being nerds that sold things to other nerds, and there was a growing acceptance of Star Trek and Star Wars fandom as not being something abnormal and to be mocked. But, yeah VtM had a sexiness to it that made it much more attractive to communities that hadn't gotten into the wargaming and pulp fiction inspired earlier games. The first time I knew the hobby was getting cool, I went into a book store and found two teen girls maybe 5 years younger than me at the time, in the floor with an open copy of 'LA by Night' in front of them, and they were reading it together, and as I walked up, one of them said, "He's in torpor during the day on top of elevators. Can you imagine? Oh that's just so sexy." Now I'm not saying the VtM community was necessarily healthy, but yeah it did attract players that previously would have not seen the attraction.
Yeah, a lot of this is very true. Black American culture is like any form of American culture, conservative, stubborn, and adverse to trying things differently. Growing up in a predominately black community, I didn't even know tabletop RPGing was a thing until I went to summer camp as a kid. Honestly, I didn't see the appeal of it back then since I was more of a videogamer, but I didn't knock those kids that enjoyed that type of stuff. But I did pick up the vibe that it was "nerdy" and as I got older, I did start to see that a large swath of black people saw tabletop gaming as a "white people thing." In fact, it was actually pretty hard finding black kids who were into fantasy in general when I was growing up in the early 00s. Everyone was obsessed with the newest Bad Boys movie or some obscure ghetto movie that nobody heard of. Black American cultures do have this adverse obsession with retaining a "black card" which means you have to fit into this socially, often always stereotypical archetype of what a black person is supposed to be like. The original Fresh Prince did an excellent job portraying this dynamic in one of their best episodes, and I've seen it with my one-two eyes growing up. I genuinely did not start seeing a majority of black people get into fantasy until GOT was wrapping up. But as it stands with tabletop RPGing, it's still very much a rarity.
I can only speak for myself, as a child of the 80's who got started in the 2nd wave of RPGs, just as the AD&D books were being published, and the Basic D&D boxed set was published, and the hobby was first reaching a wide audience. Certainly none of my friends would have objected to a black kid at the table. Players were players. But two things prevented that from ever happening. 1) First, understand that being a nerd in the 1980s was not cool at a level that the a modern audience might not be able to understand. It meant you would be subject to a lot of semi socially approved of violence and mockery. Our table was not a table of cool people whom other teens wanted to be seen as friends with. Our table was essentially a nerd street gang that formed up out of self-defense because we were tired of getting beaten up. But as bad as it would have been for us lower economic class white nerds, the situation would have been far worse for any potential black friends we knew that might have joined us. The few black nerds we knew had to do their best to hide even as much as that they did their homework for fear of being set upon by their black peers and beaten. If they took an interest in academic things openly, if they liked science or computers or heaven forbid comics, roleplaying games, wargames, Star Trek, Star Wars, and all the rest of the stuff we geeked out about, they garnered comments like, "What are you some sort of oreo?", "You trying to be white?" from their black peers. So the idea that any of them might want to join the nerds openly is far fetched. I mean there were similar things going on with teen girls at the time. It's not that we nerds would have in any way tried to exclude a girl from playing, and in fact two girls we knew seemed to be RPG curious. We would have loved to have had female social companionship. The problem was that these girls were popular, but loving nerdy things or even letting it be known that they were as intelligent as they actually were and not the empty headed bimbos that they pretended to be in order to be popular, was not going to (at least in their mind) help their social standing. 2) Of the few black nerdy people we knew that might have had an interest in it, they almost always came from very conservative religious backgrounds. I myself came from a religious background, and as a result of certain poorly conceived elements of art and occult included in the early D&D game, this was a problem. So almost certainly, the few nerd types whose parents highly encouraged them to value education, also had parents who would have highly discouraged any interest in RPGs at the time (which lets face it, was mostly D&D and other TSR publications). I'm actually really pleasantly surprised, because I have had so many encounters with younger black people new to the hobby who rage against my generation as if we had oppressed black people out of participation in hobby in some way, imagining I guess that we in the 1980's lived in a world where being a nerd was really cool and we had lots of people trying to get into the community and we were gatekeeping it in some fashion like we had some sort of stature and authority. But that's nothing like my experience, and it sounds like to me you are old enough to have had some first hand experience with the actual problems faced by members of the black community at the time.
Video popped up in my feed and I gotta say, I'm glad it did. Appreciate your perspective and philosophy! I'd say the only thing less common that a black player (I had one at my table for a couple years) is a Pastor player...The Satanic Panic is a big deal in every church community I think. I have never had another pastor at my table. I've never even felt comfortable sharing the hobby with any other pastors (especially since I primarily DM that game which shall not be mentioned), or even many congregants. I usually keep it on the DL. I grew up in fundamentalist churches during the 80s, so I might be just living out my own fears. But it was great to see another Pastor who plays.
You just got a new subscriber. As someone who has been playing RPGs since 1978, practically all of my life, I am grateful for you and for this video. Instead of pointing fingers and placing blame, you share some truths and some insights. If more people could forgive, be patient, and be kind, I think there would be a lot more opportunity for diversity at the gaming tables and conventions.
I'm just looking to get into RPG's, just happened this vid popped in my recommended. Quality content and an outstanding breakdown. Vid needs more views.
In the 2010's I was living in Berlin, Germany. During that time, I was blessed with the luck being part of a large tabletop/rpg/dnd group. The group was made up from a broad international cast of folks, including five Americans, four of them black. They were probably the most dedicated and probably obsessed players I have ever played with.
Brought here by the RPG algorithm, and I'm glad to be here! This is a really excellent, informative video, I've never seen the cultural issues covered so well, incredibly interesting. This is definitely a fantastic response to the issues that have been going on, especially in the last decade. Awesome work overall, you've got a new subscriber. I hope you succeed at whatever you do!
Oh my God. Dude, there’s no one else who will say it like this man. I just found you because of this video, and I’m gonna be honest I’m gonna go binge the rest of your stuff. I agree with all your opinions, and I wish more people understood this. I’ve had a few Black people at my tables, even a few guys actually from Africa. One of my long-term players is from Egypt, and I’ve talked with him about this a few times. It’s really sad what the destruction of individualism is doing, but yeah. Thanks for speaking up man.
This video is two years old, but truer words have n ver been spoken. I’m a 59 year old Hispanic gamer and I’ve only ever played war games with black people at conventions. I’ve never had an opportunity to locate a player, such as yourself, and play locally. I hope one day to meet someone like you to play my favorite RPGs before the Lord calls me home. God bless and keep you sir. Big fan of your channel now that I’ve discovered you. Will recommend to others!
I am just now finding your channel. Subscribed immediately. “The black community suppresses the individual.” Thank you for saying this, it needs to be better known.
Amen. I’ve never had another white person say to me “you can’t do that, it’s not white.” Because that’s ridiculous. No one person should be forced to be a monolith of someone’s perception of a culture.
I remember my sister and I moving and starting 4th grade at a school in the projects that was all black but the two of us. Absolutely have to agree with your particular point about black people and saying someone is acting "acting white". I have to assume my presence exacerbated the matter a little bit being the token white kid in the grade, but I heard that several times a day every day. The things it would be in reference to were truly depressing in their scope and/or importance: Enjoying learning (reading, grammar, math, history etc were looked at as either fake or useless), dressing normally, showing emotion, refraining from fighting, enjoying fantasy or sci fi. Every culture has its problems, good on you for being brave enough to point out yours out AND give constructive feedback
You actually gained a subscriber,I'm new to the world of rpg and a black person voicing their concerns with this hobby is exactly what gives me the confidence to think I'm starting to learn about it from the right perspective.
My friend Darren that played with us commented that he hid his Forgotten Realms books from his friends the way he hid porn mags from his mom. It was a dirty secret that he ‘played pretend’ cause it was perceived as being weak among his non-gamer friends. He couldn’t wear his game credentials on his sleeve because of peer pressure and his friends clowning on him so hard about it.
Oh! I want to also say that I've seen guys in the military all playing RPGs. This was 20 years ago. A lot of them were black. And I think one was even a girl. These were a mixture of regular Navy and Navy Seals who lived in barracks on base. Those in the military tend to be on top of things when it comes to gaming.
Military players. I can imagine there are some geeks among our armed forces. Awesome sauce! I really want a good female RPG Elite in my group. It has been a good minute since I've had one, and only one all my years playing. Not that I haven't run across some potential candidates. However, when I refer them to my What Is an RPG Elite? video, I get crickets. That means not RPG Elite which means it's better they didn't respond.
@@RPGElite There are always a lot of geeks in the military churn, Enlisted and Officer alike. I was gonna post a similar response to the above, as it's where I also saw the most cultural crossover into RPGs. Exposure to games there is pretty high for everyone tho, as you often find yourself with nothing to do, stuck with folks/friends with a lot of different interests, and no one to tell you you shouldn't give it a shot and have some fun with those friends. I do think it's changing tho in general and the stigmas you mentioned are beginning to fall away (finally). Your observations were spot on. Subscribed!
One of the greatest Game Masters and prolific miniature painters I ever met was a Navy Seal! His background was French Arabic and he served in Vietnam and the Gulf Wars ( eventually made Commander ) . He ran a wonderful game called Empire of the Petal Throne which was decidedly non- European centric ! P.S. he was also a Jesuit penitent , a martial artist and a linguist …
@@RPGElite So many of us who have or continue to serve are about that geek life. The first time I ever rolled dice was in a barracks room back in Iwakuni Japan in 2000. It took me almost 20 years to roll dice again. And yes, I was the only black person in the group.
TTRPGing since 1979. THIS is my first exposure to your channel. I've thought about your points for a few days since watching and I can't think of any valid reasons beyond what you have stated. Happy to see a Black man not only PLAYING ttrpgs, but RUNNING them, AND educating the rest of us with a ttrpg TH-cam channel. Gonna go check out the rest of your videos. Keep 'em comin'.
When I was stationed in Korea for the second time, I tried to get to know some of the role-playing guys in the barracks. Each time I inquired into playing a game with them, I was turned down and told they would let me know when they would have an opening in the game, so I tried to make do with what they told me, and tried to talk lore with them, and each time I was either given the cold shoulder or out and out brushed off, so, with my book case of lore, I had to deal with watching them collect dust. That was until I got placed on a new track and in a new platoon, and the first time my new track commander NCO came down to my room with me to clean our weapons from a field problem he was amazed at my collection, Dragon Lance, BattleTech tech manuals, novels, D&D monster manuals, and other RPG related books for running games and stuff, he asked if I was in a group, I told him no, him and some other guys he knew invited me to one of their games, and that NCO of mine was from the Bahamas. Him and his group welcomed me with open arms and told me every time they were running a game or if I wanted to come and hang out when they were running a game. That said, I hear a lot of gamers on You Tube bragging about how open and accepting they were and are of new players, well, from my experience, whenever I tried to get to know or tried to make friends with gamers, I was always meet with a door to the face, or if I was allowed to a game, I was either belittled with my character, or told to shut up and just roll the dice when I wanted to ask questions, treated like a fifth wheel and made to feel awkward. At one session I was allowed to sit in on, the GM's wife made a gay character and told me I had to play him, or I was not allowed to play, and when I asked why he was gay, she told me because I looked gay, and it was either that or I could go home. And at one point even told to just go home because I really was not wanted there, and I was not worth the effort for a new player courtesy. That black NCO from the Bahamas was the first truly welcoming gamer to extend an invitation to sit down and play and inquire about tabletop gamming. Never before or after, have I even felt welcoming or wanted, or invited to gaming sessions. I am sorry, but for all the gripes I hear on You Tube and read about from tabletop players in the community and about how they are "Welcoming and are always happy to welcome new players" that may be true for them, but my experience, has been just the opposite, the only time the groups I knew wanted me as a player, was either as a token offering, or they wanted to have a new player that they could just throw away as a sacrifice of some sort in the game, cannon fodder, or just make it appear that they were welcoming, when in fact, they made the game so awkward that I wouldn't feel welcomed back.
Sorry to hear that. All I can say is that all the groups that I've been in and have known people in were very welcoming to new players, or if they didn't have room in their group they could recommend another.
That really sucks, unfortunately there are plenty of elitists, but most of the people I've met are super nice and friendly but of course I have had run ins with a few bad apples that would have completely turned me off had they been one of my first few encounters.
This sounds a lot like my experience as a black man with comics and manga in the early 2000s. Sometimes when I would go to the cons I was always made to feel like an outsider or that I was an unwelcomed thug. I was curious and excited to express my love of the hobby only to get a cold shoulder from the non blacks. Thank God it's A LOT better nowadays.
I think that having a pastor or other religious figure that can advocate for RPGs is of great benefit to the hobby as well. I remember the Satanic Panic and was fortunate enough to be able to find an article about a member of the clergy who ran a game, and show it to my parents to make it clear to them that I wasn't being inducted into a cult.
I had my D and D books destroyed by a Latino Catholic guy. It’s definitely not just a black issue for sure. The Satanic Panic was predominantly propagated by white southern churches.
The Satanic Panic was also so incredibly astroturfed. There is no actual reason for Christian people to fear this stuff - and I honestly think that if it wasn't for a lot of the socio-political machinations going on between Nixon and Reagan, it wouldn't have happened.
During the satanic panic against DnD, many of our nuclear submarine crews were playing DnD while out to sea. It was something you could do in a small, confined space. Thank God the devil didn't possess them and make them launch their nukes.
You should give yourself more credit. This was actually a very good video. Keep doing what you're doing bud :) I literally laughed so hard at your sigh @19:15 btw !!
Found this video, I am subscribing to you. I don't have a group and I'm going remember what you say when looking for a group or members. I experienced D&D around the time of the Satanic Panic an was gone for a bit and got into it when my daughter got interested. I can't wait to hear what wisdom your experience has given you as I get back into RPG playing.
Im so happy i found this channel. Being black, growing up loving fantasy and the like, i didnt think I was going to find other black folks to play. Over on discord, a small group of friends of mine did a one shot, and each one of us are black. When the DM asked me to join, since she was gathering all her black ttrpg friends, my first gasp was, "Wait there's more than just you and me?!" It was so fun. And im so ready to play with them again. I really hope my black TTRPG people will find their way to each other and have as much fun as we all did!
It's not something I thought about a ton but yeah up until pretty recently we've only really had Lou Wilson (and even he hasn't been around that long) and B.Dave Walters. It's been really cool to see Aabria Iyengar rocket up in popularity and it was so cool seeing a majority black cast on misfits and magic but I really hope the steam keeps up and we continue seeing more rep going forward.
That thing you said about "That's not black" Resonates with me so hard in ways you don't even understand. You're completely right in that aspect because not only did black people sometimes say that but white kids at my private school would say that to me too. Trying to get the black community into something like tabletop games will be rather hard as we essentially have to show the benefits of it to the black community. We have to show the black community that we are a part of it just as much as the white community. We have to make it clear that this is all our own interest and not for some type of racial reasons.
Just subscribed BECAUSE of this video. Love understanding new perspectives, especially when they can bring value to me and my community. Appreciate the education!
It was really cool to see you talk about this. I've been lucky enough to not really experience the "you're not black" treatment. Just in jest from my uncle, mainly for loving metal. He's very much a nerd too, even got me into anime and videos games when I was a kid. My mom was really the one who experienced this growing up. Having loved bands like Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue and Dio. None of the black kids at her school wanted to hang out with her, but the white kids did, because they were all into the same music scene. Which she probably got more flack for. So it's really awesome to see someone with a similar perspective talk about this, thanks for that!
An interesting insight! I have been playing TTRPG for 35 years and have only found in the last 5 years or so that people of any colour are a little more open about playing a TTRPG. There was such a stigma associated with this game from most people in general, regardless of colour. Anyway, I always thought of D&D as an activity that brings people together that transcends our cultures, colours, sex, politics etc, and that can’t be a bad thing. Thanks and take care!
Yep, don't like Critical Roll ether, watched it one time that was enough, just like all my D&D sessions, though Matt is on a High Tier level as a DM, but that is not needed to have fun with parties. Use to be primarily a DM, but did that for 30 year, I prefer to play now LOL. Got lazy.
Dnd is the gateway, but lots of people go on. I did not care for critical role, ok, just not anything that seemed exceptional. I dig your lands of doom box. I grew up playing marvel rpg. The ultimate powers book was the best.
@@RPGElite respect for playing trpgs for the genre and community, not just for brand/monetization which I seen alot of ppl did when they jump into dnd.
Man! I have so many questions! But first, I have huge respect and gratitude for you saying all of this with a clarity I've never heard from anyone before. (And, you're right, it really IS a place where most fear to tread). I'm apparently as old as you and have been playing about as long as you, so this video really hit home. True to what you said, I've never been part of a very large group and, among the 3-5 of us at the table, it was rare to have a black person (or any person of color) at the table. (Interestingly, it was probably at least as rare to have a female at the table, which is obviously a different thing, but makes me wonder if any of the same dynamics were at work). I did see examples of every one of your reasons for this: 1, ignorance was common among all groups, but it probably did affect women and people of color more because you really had to be the kind of person to hang out in hobby shops and read books before buying them to get into the game (even blank character sheets were sold separately, you had to buy different ones for different classes. There was a lot of overlap with video gamers (which, at the time, was 8-bit-if-youre-lucky), so everyone involved had to have a lot of spare time high suspension of disbelief). 2, no interest I 100% agree. It didn't help things that the biggest hobby shop in my neighborhood was also a headshop. Also, I'm sure it doesn't help that playing rpgs takes a lot of effort, creativity, and cooperation, whereas playing established sports, card games, or board games of the time required almost exclusively just following very clear rules and treating almost everyone else involved as an opponent. 3, Black American culture... sadly my group definitely did hear "that's not Black" but we also heard "that's not cool", "that's not healthy", "that's not Christian" and plenty of words that can be paraphrased as "that's not hetero-normative." It's very interesting to me that so many of these overlap in places. It seemed almost every self-identified group was trying to come up with a reason of saying "that's not us," but the Black American culture always had (at least) one extra hurdle to jump over, "that ain't Black," and I wonder how much that also overlapped with the others. 4, religious stigma: Again, I 100% agree. The satanic panic was in full effect (I grew up in Memphis, TN). This was huge, but, in my experience, the Black church was at least slightly more permissive than my own (bleach-white) Baptist church. In my church camp, we couldn't even play "go fish" because the cards (standard playing cards) were "clearly" surrogates for tarot cards and... I don't know, I guess they were afraid we'd have some lively game of crazy 8's and accidentally summon a demon? (And, then, said demon was probably going to teach us all to dance laciviously... like... Elvis??) ...so, the next thing you did was to open this up to us commenters to add questions/observations. In that spirit, I want to suggest a couple more. Do either of these hold any water in your opinion? 5?, exclusion by omission (implicit ethnic prejudice)? Elephant-in-the-room, a ton of the earliest groups were white and a lot of those (probably my own included) were slow to invite Black folks... or girls... or anybody that didn't look almost exactly like us. Being clear, I don't recall a single racial slur or even "don't ask him to play, he's Black" comment. But I do think this was going on in a more implicit way. Maybe rpg-gamers just assumed that almost everybody was "too cool" (see reason #3) to want to play. Maybe they just assumed that their Black friends were too cool, too Christian, too macho, etc. to like rpgs. (Even we players ourselves weren't beyond buying into the existing stereotypes. Also, invitations could backfire, so their was always some level of fear that whoever you invited would tell your mom, or your principal, or even maybe attack you (e.g. a guy once spit on my friend -- that's as far as it went, although he threatened a lot more). Confessing to being an rpg player back in the mid-80's was pretty close to confessing to being a masturbator (then suggesting everybody read the "player's handbook...") 6? basic survival? The rpg subculture (per all the above) had a ton of strikes against it. Does it make sense for anyone to want to paint a target on themselves? True, you probably weren't going to be physically attacked just for being an rpg player, but probably 30-40% of the people who found out you were would assume you were involved in drug culture, or homosexuality (still very stigmatized back then, during the AIDS crisis), or satanism, or suffering from mental illness (also full of stigma, even worse back then than now). Did you see Tom Hanks in "Mazes and Monsters"? The ignorance (#1) didn't need much fermentation time to become irrational fear. Anyway, sorry for the long reply, and thanks very much again for such a great post!
Well said, and your reply fills in some holes in the video. A contrast to TTRPG would be the Fighting Game Community - there are LOTS of Black American players and (semi-)pros. The reason why is because in the late 90's and 2000's fighting games became really accessible - once you got the components (which could be cheap after years on the market), just pick up and play. Also, you didn't need to do prep work and gather several people who did the same AND meet your same bar of loving fantasy. "Video games" quickly fell out of the category of "not Black" thanks to that (and I was around for when it WAS in that category). Your point about the Black American version of "not cool" hits the nail on the head. I'm not trying to downplay how caustic the "that's not Black" or "that's for White people" idea is, but in reality, it ends up being an ethnically enhanced version of "that's lame" or "that's for nerds". This arose because being Black in the US has meant that you MUST have some connection to 'The Black Community' to (socially) survive (because otherwise, you're adrift with no support when Black-specific issues come up). It's a shame that weak-minded people use that to shame those who want to do things outside "the norm", but it's important to put it in context - this is something that's common to humanity as a social species, not specific to 'The Black Community'.
Thank you for your insight on this topic. I've been working really hard to make my table more inclusive and welcoming to everyone, so having this perspective really gives me a lot to consider and take onto account
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences, RPG Elite. I hope you’ve been subsequently introduced to Three Black Halflings. Their podcast is both laugh out loud funny and deeply insightful with regards to the issues of race in TTRPG. Also, their episodes of homebrew D&D game play are very crunchy and very entertaining with role playing. Everyone on this thread please go check out Three Black Halflings.
I am a White guy, that being said. My wife and I adopted twin boys who happen to be black. My 13 year old boys love D&D. In our version of the world there are not just Northern European types. We have a full spectrum of people. I try to be mindful of the lack of people of color in the D&D world.
Sub and liked. I want more people playing TTRPG's regardless of ethnicity. This is one of the most fulfilling hobbies I personally have. Anyways, keep up the content and hopefully we can bring more people into this thing we love so much.
Thank you for sharing your passion for gaming, honesty, fearlessness, open challenges, and call to action. Your understanding of the broader American culture, the African-American experience, Church culture and hysteria, and bringing it together with personal experience helped make this video for me! You have inspired me to grow my gaming circle and to think of what true inclusiveness could look like. Please continue to keep at it! This was so refreshing to see and hear. Cheers!
This was an extremely level headed and reasonable discussion. I know at the beginning you mentioned you might lose subscribers on this one, but I can tell you you gained mine. Looking forward to watching more of your content.
I ran Pathfinder Society weekly at a local store for almost three years. This was back in the first edition Pathfinder days. For those who aren't familiar with it, Pathfinder Society (PFS) was designed for walk-in play. There was practically no barrier to entry at all. The game was published under the Open Gaming License and the full rules were available online for free. There were a bunch of pre-generated characters printed and ready so you didn't even need a character. They didn't even need dice since I always had plenty. It was all built around standardized, one-shot scenarios with standardized rewards so there was no time commitment beyond that session. It cost $5 but that included $2 in store vouchers so it was really only $3. I was the guy who ran the low tier intro scenarios so I met all of the new players. Anyone with a desire to play and a few bucks could walk in, sit down and play. In almost three years, I saw one black player. He was a white-collar professional type. I think he was an engineer of some sort. He had to move for his job so he wasn't around for long. That's the only black player I saw in 32-33 months of running PFS every week.
Mike Pondsmith is an rpg god, I might have started on "red box" d&d, but I cut my teeth on cyberpunk 2020. Louis Porter Jr's Obsidian Apocalypse was an AMAZING setting (I haven't had a chance to check out his Neoexodus line of products, but I've heard its good.) also at the start of the video you wanted an example of a black persons channel for rpg's, then you mentioned a black woman were you referencing Jessa from crafts and conquests, or Aabria Iyengar from critical role? I know Aabria doesn't own the critical role channel, but she does hold a pretty important role as a regular dungeon master. anyway, I appreciate your up front attitude about this subject. I have subscribed :-)
Subbed. I want to know more about what you think. " Ethnic prejudice " is SUCH an apt description for what is usually called racism. VERY well put Sir. I have had a few black friends who got in to DnD pretty much as soon as they were invited to try it out, but some of them were very apprehensive for most of the reasons you have listed here and you are right they were very very few compared to the white kids I knew who gamed. I think a lot of people think it is more due to cultural representations but I never found this to be the case. Everybody generally just makes the characters they want to play and finds a way to tell the story of who they are where they came from how they got to where they are IF the characters were not just standard fantasy type characters anyway. I had the immense pleasure to be part of a gaming group that ran through out the entirety of my 9th grade year in which there were 9 regulars and probably 5 or 6 people who would drop in and out so we tended to just runt heir characters in their absence. In that group 6 of the regulars were white including me, two players were Indian. they were brothers one of whom was not one of the regular players, and two black guys, one of whom was actually really shocking to me because he was SO not your typical " nerd " type guy and I hate to use that word but we are talking about 1992 Middle Mississippi..... you just did not see a lot of hip cats and tough guys or sports dudes playing DnD. Anyway. We had a great time and just played the game. it was a great group, we all experienced the stigma associated with gaming at the time but we had a great time together all the same.
VERY interesting video! I’ve been in the RPG community since 1976 ! I’ve run open gaming at libraries, Conventions and special events. It’s the PERCEIVED Cultural hindrances that keep people from exploring our hobby. I find a great inroad , in multiple cases , is shared cultural influences like movies and video games. Youngsters , may be interested, but do not want to be seen as “ nerdy “. Think of it as the Erkle Effect . Interestingly ,my group has always included both evangelicals and Asian Americans . I have no idea why! Keep asking the uncomfortable questions! May your dice always roll hot!
![Get Your Group To Break Up with D&D Using [Crown & Skull]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2svCAA5GvbM/mqdefault.jpg)
Well, now that I've opened up this can of worms, tell me how many black people you've played RPGs with. Are there any playing in your current group? Scribble a little bit below and let the rest of the geekheads know.
I've been playing since the late 80s and live in the United Kingdom. I don't think I have ever played with a black person. About 15 years ago somebody I was explaining the hobby to said "i bet not many black people play that". I thought it was an odd thing to say but they were right in my experience and after that have felt it as something missing.
Most times when I’ve played with people of color it has been at conventions or online though pre-COVID I would always come across kids of color at the local gaming store playing a variety of geeky games.
One of my oldest friends GMs with a youth pastor at his church. They have several groups playing at once, and it still boggles my mind how much things have changed.
I wonder if you think that online interactions will make this more normalized.
Collaborative storytelling is a really cool hobby that i think a lot of people could enjoy, and i nerd out about it to pretty much anyone that will listen to me. Granted, i think about getting kids and even my mother in law to play, so maybe my goals are a bit lofty.
There are two black guys that play and run games at a local game store for Adventurers League. They are about 17-18. Good guys, lots of enthusiasm. But no it's not common, it seems to be a cultural difference, for the most part. I think the internet has helped some, but sadly not enough.
I honestly have no idea how many black people I've played RPGs with, because it's not something I ever kept track of. I only paid attention if they wanted to play, and I've run enough games at demos, game days, and conventions to have played with all kinds of people . . . who wanted to play.
I owned a gaming store in the early 00s. The store was in a southern Georgia college town. We had a dnd group that was all black. It didn't start out that way. I DMed for the group for a while and it has 3 black guys, a Hispanic guy, a mixed guy and me a white guy. I left the group cause of other responsibilities conflicting and another black guy joined and the Hispanic guy dropped to play Magic more. The guys in the group bonded over there love of anime. No one at their homes accepted their rpg hobby. It got to the point that they would leave their books at my shop to not be hassled about it at home. I've never seen an rpg table of all black kids since. They were the greatest guys. My store was a haven of sorts. It didn't matter to anyone who you were outside of those doors. Inside you were one of us.
Yeah I was being told I’m playing a Devils game should be reading the Bible more
I concur, D&D should be a safe space for everyone. Whatever you are outside the doors doesn't matter at the table. Like any other form of entertainment, we play to escape the real world, not live it some more.
Such a great story, thanks for sharing!
It's just good clean fun!
@@Oakbeast But there's more to Tabletop RPGs than just Fantasy and D&D. There's Sci-Fi and Modern for instance. Wizards of The Coast even had a D20 Modern & Sci-Fi.
None of the groups I've been part of ever sought or excluded anyone because of race, that I am aware of.
Though the fact that you had that is REALLY cool! I've never been part of anything like that.
Gaming can really bring people together in ways that others can't. To build friendships and forge new connections. There's even been ways people have used in Mental Health to help build Confidence, Overcome Social Anxiety, etc.
The first time I saw Pondsmith, (the creator of Cyberpunk) I did a triple-take. It is rare to see a black man at a game table, but to have one create an entire genre of RPG!? I was blown away.
Cyberpunk 2020 is an amazing system that has captured my heart. He made an amazing game system that just but rushes you with visceral violence and a need to socialize to survive.
Mike Pondsmith is a freaking genius! He is right up there with Gygax and Arneson in his importance to the RPG industry.
It's also probably the best system out there in my opinion.
I've quite a few systems and it's so well rounded and so versatile. You can run almost any kind of game you want within the system. It's absolutely brilliant.
Same....I was completely blown away by Michael Pondsmith.
I GMed his other game, The Witcher, it's a little complex and very deadly, but I love rpgs with complex rules, they make me feel like the creators really used his heart and soul in it (in fact my absolute favourite game in Legend of the Five Rings, one of the most complex and hard to learn rpg that I know).
As a black high school student in high school in the 80’s going to a private schools that had an RPG club was how I found out about them. Even though I was interested in them and friendly with people who played them, they thought my interest was not true, I was black, à good athlete and popular. It wasn’t until after college that I actually got involved in the hobby by chance. I meet a person at just duty while playing cards which we bonded over, talked about the scout science fiction fantasy series I enjoyed and eventually we became friends and he invited me to game with him and his group. It didn’t work out with his group but we ended up creating a separate group and I’ve been playing since then. Mostly now I GM and still love RPG’s
Awesome sauce. I love hearing this. 👍🏿🙂
It was the athlete part people had a problem with in the 80s and 90s. The bullying was very real back then.
@@angrybellsprout I agree they couldn’t believe I wasn’t trying to set them up for something.
your school had an RPG club??? WOW What kewl teacher sponsored that? Awesome.I hate that your school mates were closed minded. What do you run?
But you do realize that being an athlete was more of a reason to not be invited, than being a black guy? Most likely they assumed you will ridicule them for it.
"I'm probably going to say something in this video that's going to offend some people..." Honesty usually does. Thank you for your honesty, and for your courage in openly talking about issues that aren't easy, or comfortable.
Thanks for your support. Give me time. They'll be more. 👊🏾
Tis noble to afflict the comfortable , whilst comforting the afflicted
Good video. Throughout high school AND college and even now, our entire table was all Black. I have been playing ttrpgs since 1979. I am from Chicago. At present, I live in Atlanta. Keep up the great work.
Hey, hey!
And here we have proof - there ARE bigfoots and unicorns. :-)
Happy gaming!
You was blessed, very very rare occasion for you.
@@RPGElite Another Chicago native here. Started in high school (early 80's) and still going strong. Entire table was all black friends, back in the day, but more recently our virtual online table has been a rainbow of roleplayers. Great content!
St louis Here We had Folks in Our games that were Black back in the day and even though We moved a part over time We still get together and Play online/ We all lived in the Inner City and played as an escape Thats just how I think We kept out of trouble and kept our sanity. We played it all too D&D, Rifts etc But You make some great points and I remember My BF Who is Black when He asked His Parents for books for His Birthday they referred to D&D as that "White Kids" game. Critical Role is sad Tokenism is real.
I started in the 80's with only black people. Southside of Chicago.
This was excellent. Many of the points made could themselves be their own videos.
Thank you much for the support!
It was so frustrating growing up as the only mixed person in my family and constantly having my interests judged as evidence as what "side I was on". I'd just talked in therapy yesterday about your third reason, about how my interest in innocuous things like fantasy books and TTRPGs were used as evidence that I was "too white". Which is just so insulting and people say it without even thinking twice.
It's genuinely sad such thing happens.
BTW the fact being "too white" is considered as an insult is a solid proof "BlaCk PeOpLe CaN't Be RaCiSt" is total BS and damaging to black people themselves.
Honestly, it sucks that any action can be categorized as a "Side" thing. I mean just do wat you do, it ain't matter wat side ur on, it shouldn't define ur side either
Yeah, because they're racist as hell, as is everyone around them lmao.
Yeah man that s*** sucks I hate I hate those f****** stereotype b******* oh I can't eat certain foods or all I can't like certain sports it's f****** dumb dude I f****** hate that b*******.
I imagine the people that shamed you for liking hobbies that are "too white" probably were the same people that claimed to be "definitely not racist"
After all the years of being called a burned cracker, this video has given me a little bit of comfort. Thank you brother for making this video. I made sure to share it everywhere I could.
I've never heard the term "burned cracker". Is that specific to a biracial or black person "acting" white? Just trying to understand. I'd just consider you a friend or player. :-)
That's both hilarious and disheartening.
@@jamesflanagan3086 Yep that's pretty much it. I played d&d, magic the gathering, drew anime, and wrote campaigns for other ttrpgs most of my high school career.
Because of that, and my other nerdy tendencies, I was basically treated like the red headed stepchild of my hood. Even if I was darker than most of them combined.
Don't get me started on the "that's the devil's work" aspect of living with black grandparents and loving d&d lol.
@@jamesflanagan3086 The fact that people asociate being black as hood gangsters, drug dealers and rap music and if you are not involved into that as a black person you are a failure really tells you that society is at a low point.
@@WoofyMcDoodle That really is sad. What you listen to etc shouldn't be used as a standard to judge someone. How you treat others tells volumes.
There was a minister on the radio the other day defending the hobby in light of satanic panic and stuff saying he played it with his son and it was a great way to develop team work, empathy, improvisation, dealing with different situations. I totally respect anyone who speaks there mind. We all have them and like you say everything will just be ignorance unless we allow ourselves to be heard. There's good and bad in every field
As a black man that's been DM'ing since highschool I wish I could have given this video two thumbs up. You hit the nail on the head, great video from start to finish. The wind up had me cringing for impact but you killed it.
Thank you for the love. Much appreciated. Keep it locked because i have plenty more coming, God willing.
Happy gaming!
@@RPGElite You might think about DMing a live game with minorities... Terry Crews comes to mind!
I remember when a major metal musician 'Lemmy' kilmister got an agony aunt style mail from a black fan. He was a kid whose black parents didn't understand his love of metal music and was being treated poorly as a result.
Lemmy got upset, saying that if people can't accept the things you like, they're not your friends.
It's really hard to grow up loving something that you'll be ostracised for.
It's hard to get involved in something like that when there is no one in your direct community who enjoys that hobby. You don't have that direct experience with it.
I became a dnd guy when normie group of friends ostracised me, I then found a bunch of nerdy guys who wanted to play dnd. I had no thoughts about it either way and fell in love with the community.
I thought of Lemmy too. That was a great response he had. Don't let other people restrict what you like (at least as long as it's harmless fun, like music or games). All hobbies should be accessible for everyone.
I remember seeing that Lemmy video too!
You know lemme was a neo nazi it is very well documented good story though.......Lol
@@deezy4000 that is a lie and you are disparaging a dead man.
Shame on you
@@TrentTheWanderer yeah some said the same thing about Saville at first have seen him carry a nazi flag onto the stage with him as in I was there I don't care what you say bro
My brother and I are both mixed, and we grew up with a lot of nerdy interests - which naturally means we’ve been accused of ‘acting too white’ when we get into nerd stuff and ‘pretending to act black’ when we get into stuff that isn’t dominated by white culture. It’s so frustrating, and it definitely kept me away from TTRPGs for a long time - I didn’t want to pick up another habit that was supposedly only for white men.
Now that I’ve been playing since 2016 (started with Pathfinder but my current group has been playing D&D 5E for the past three years) I’m consistently the only black player in every ttrpg game I’ve played, and I’m often the only woman at the table too, so I still get looked at strangely sometimes. It doesn’t stop me from playing anymore but it gets SO exhausting sometimes.
Seeing people like Aabria get to DM for Critical Role, even if I also don’t watch it, gives me hope that eventually we’ll see more black players in the coming years, who don’t get told they’re trying to act white just because they want to play a game they haven’t tried before.
I wish I lived near you it would an honor to play a game with you. Often I am the only Latino guy at the table and or the only minority. God Speed
I don't like that we still name culture by color. I understand why it was, but naming cultures by color is like naming gender by sex, in my mind.
Just tell them to sod off, whoever them is. Do what you like.
Uncomfortable truths can be incredibly difficult to articulate, but this was well said. Much respect for tastefully addressing a minefield of a topic.
9:19. I agree with this 3,000. I started playing D&D in 2nd grade. In my experience the only people who ever told me black people shouldn't play RPGs were people who didn't play RPGs. The TTRPG community has never been the barrier. I agree that the problem was more from the black community than from the TTRPG community. Also white, non-TTRPG players were always surpirsed that I didn't find the TTRPG community horribly racist. I always when I was a kid from 2-6 my campaign group was 2 black guys, 2 white guys, and a chinese guy, and I was like we get along fine and go to conventions and everything. Non TTRPGers were the ones freaked ou tby that, not the TTRPG community at all..
Yeah, nothing like being a gamer to make you see through the racism hype.
This is why I REALLY liked College Humor’s Dimension 20. They routinely keep a diverse cast of GMs and players and I wish more folks watched them
Lou Wilson and Zac Oyama are both phenomenal players
My friend, who is black, just told me he's never heard of "this nerd stuff" and now he's played two sessions and excited about continuing. He brought a work friend, also black, who's been playing since mid 2000s.
I've been playing for 30 years and I am regularly surfing TH-cam for ttrpg channels and occasionally POC channels specifically. That's how I found Ember Moon's channel. I've seen DOZENS of ttrpg content by white creators with less than 400 subscribers but today is the first day I found your channel. It's easier for me to find a foreign language ttrpg page than it is a black ttrpg youtuber. I can't tell you why exactly but that's what it is.
“It's easier for me to find a foreign language ttrpg page than it is a black ttrpg youtuber.”
I could not stop laughing when I read this, mostly because it's a true thing. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don't think there's a thing wrong with Caucasian dudes doing their thang in the TTRPG space. More power to them. I am thoroughly in their corner if they are putting out decent content like Seth Sorkowsky and WASD. However, it just punctuates my point in the video.
Glad to be one of the first. God willing, going to be here for a good minute.
Thanks for mentioning Ember Moon, I'd never know about her dnd content otherwise.
My black coworker asked me about it because he saw D&D being played on Big Bang Theory. Asked if one are there people really like Sheldon in the nerd culture and Is that what all D&D was about.
I'll be another one. This man inspired me; I've loved TTRPG's for a long time and watched as other people told me how black people feel about TTRPG's. That ends today.
Mike Pondsmith and R. Talsorian Games
He created Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk Red, The Witcher
He also created Fuzion with many games like Artesia, Sengpku, Dragon Ball Z, so.many more
I’m a young black person and from the moment I’ve learned about dnd I’ve been loud about my interest. When I moved in with with my older relatives it became a problem because they just couldn’t wrap there head around it. That was the first time I kinda ran into that problem. I feel like I’ve been more gifted then others after watching your video or maybe it’s just because of the generation I’m in everytime I play dnd there’s always been 1 or 2 other black people. In college the table was 3 black people 1 Latino and a white person. When in high school it was two white two black and currently. My party I DM for is atleast one person of every race. I feel like or rather know what your saying is true but I can see things are looking up.
If they're old enough, the following may be of help:
"It's an improvisational radioplay with rules."
@@WilliamHostman I have a simple rule. No time travel and role-playing
I think part of that is just the massive mainstream acceptance of Geeky Hobbies.
Not to mention greater push for Representation IN our Hobbies as well!
Like if you talked about Anime back in the 2000s vs 2010s you'd see a noticeable difference.
An while I haven't personally been part of gaming with many African Americans, I DO know some who do Tabletop RPGs, we just haven't been in the same groups together. In part because of my disinterest in D&D and a lot of Fantasy type games. More into Sci-Fi.
@@TheAyanamiRei One of the more interesting situations is RTalsorian Games. Mike, the lead designer, and (AFAICT) owner, is one of the best known black designers in the industry... and yet, he's written and released probably the most white game I've ever run... Castle Falkenstein. The only dark skins visible in the core are Unseelie Fae. If Mike won't represent, who will?
@@neurocidesakiwi So, no Trek, no Dr Who, no TimeMaster, No Feng Shui for you? Too bad. Time Travel is a great story hook. My second group just started playing Feng Shui (2e), and it's time-travelling chop-socky Hong-Kong Movies style action...
The Radio-play reference should work for anyone over 50; they were still a going concern in the 70's and early 80's... "Improvisational radio-play with randomizers and rules" is a very apt description of "Theater of the Mind" style play. It's been my go-to description of RPGs since about 1984. My generation is probably one of the last to listen to them on radios...
You actually gained another follower because of how you handled this topic sir. If more people discussed topics like this with the same care and intelligence that you did, I believe our world would be in much better shape. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your future content.
Black GM here. Glad to find this channel.
"I'm going to lose subscribers with this one."
Maybe, but you gained one here!
I'm latino and I don't much like being tokenized. It seems like some in the hobby don't want to talk about this so I'm glad others out there are.
You and me both. For real.
Welcome to the circus. Got plenty more where that came from.
@@RPGElite Thank you. I'm subbed and looking forward to more content from you.
@@RPGElite As a wise man once said: "I have a dream that one day men will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Amen to that. One day that dream will come true. But I don't think that will happen before the Lord God himself makes it happen. It's a tool that has benefitted evil for far too long for it to just... go away.
As the book says: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and rulers in the darkness."
It's a spiritual battle, the effect on TTRPGs is probably just collateral damage.
+1 subscriber here as well. This video just popped up in my feed (first time I've seen this youtuber) and I found his arguments compelling and well thought out.
Same here. This is the first video of yours I've seen and I only clicked because of the subject matter.
I've been running RPGs for 30 years and I, unfortunately, lived through the satanic panic. My good friend who is a black man and man I consider to be my brother could not play with us because his brothers would pick on him verbally and physically if they caught wind. Which is sad because I feel like he would have enjoyed himself immensely. Everything you touched on here is 100% truth. Having grown up in what's called the 'deep south' it was pretty damn terrible to be an RPG player all around.
The same could be said as a gamer.
@@pantherman8719 You aren't wrong, not one bit.
I was left utterly disappointed after the satanic panic. I legit hoped an actual demon, like maybe one of Tzeentch, would pop into being bit nope, just boring, basic arithmetics that even a toddler would find simplistic and a whole host of extrovert assholes.
When keepin' it real goes RIGHT. Thank you for making this, it's a tough subject and I think you handled it as well and as bluntly as possible.
Thank you kindly. Just trying to bring a little something constructive to the TTRPG community.
An old lyric.
"You wanna keep it real?
Then step out your door.
That's as real as it gets,
From the sky to the floor."
Always loved that line lol.
I am happy to see this getting addressed. Cooperative storytelling is a human species thing. We all have ancestors who participated in this art. It needs to be inclusive to the max. Magic happens at the table when we are in the game, role playing, and every person deserves to have the opportunity to play. I firmly believe in the intimacy of a good gaming group. It is a safe place, or at least should be.
Nice. Could not have expressed this better my self. Kudos and happy gaming!
So that makes it a cool bridge between a lot of cultures. But it really does seem to be viewed as “white” as with most of nerd culture.
I agree with almost all of what is said here, but I think that some groups should not be a safe space. Let me explain. Some players are comfortable with more mature themes and circumstances. This includes sex, bigotry (in game...like ancient gender roles) and ingame racism (orcs hatred of dwarves in many stories) and violence. And this is fine, if every player is onboard.
I'm a youth librarian who is trying to bring more RPG programing into my library. A lot of my teens are black, or non-white. So I really want to make sure that what we're doing is welcoming and fun for everything. This video helped me a lot to think about what I can do. Thank you.
As a fellow librarian, the hardest thing to overcome with bringing RPG and games in the library is the colleagues and hierarchy. It could be donne quite easily, but each time they make it a chore.
I’m planning on working with my local library down the street this year. I'll use the channel and this video specifically among the others to let them see that this is a great outlet for all ethnicities and they can be a catalyst for something great in the community for these kids.
It's all part of the agenda. 😉
Happy gaming. 🙂👍🏿
As a mixed race person growing up in Japan, I have felt discrimination and a sense of not belonging (more so during my school years). It had positive and negative aspects but the overall effect is you are never allowed to forget it. TTRPG and to a lesser extent board games were the one area I found where a group of people came together without any of that. It didn't matter who you were , where you were from or what you had going on in life, we were all welcome and once a game started, we were all other people anyway and I felt really connected because of that.
It is a human and extremely common human emotion to feel that of not belonging to a group. The majority of white people have felt this among other white people. This isn't a race thing, this is a human thing.
@@cartoonhanks1708 I've never stopped feeling like an outsider.
@@cartoonhanks1708 I know it can happen for a myriad of reasons. I was directly talking about how my race impacted that. It's like going to a school where everyone is buff and you are some wimp, yeah you are never going to forget it and people are not going to let you.
@@cartoonhanks1708 No. I think it * can * be a race thing. Even the fact that is is realllllllllllllllllllly hard to find minis with black faces, black hair. Of course, eveyrone can feel like an outsider. But race is sometimes the prime factor.
Wherever Ya go always crying damn
Gained a subscriber here, as I found this video interesting and you didn't go the direction I expect.
That said, while I agree the "Satanic Panic" took heavy root in the Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches, I feel you need to remember that the single largest bump didn't come from any book or religious author, but from the 60 Minutes special on the "Satanic Panic" that aired in 1986 when the average viewership of that show was 20 million (or roughly 10% of the population). In other words, much of the Satanic Panic was pushed by the media, who have long since pretended they never did anything like that and it was all those religious fanatics...
Sure...but that was D&D. An I'm getting sick and tired of everyone pretending that D&D has been the ONLY game in town. Like there was an old version of Tabletop RPG for Starcraft for heaven's sake! To say nothing of MULTIPLE versions of Star Wars. There was a Firefly RPG. D20 Modern & Future. etc.
Heck there was one for Lord of The Rings which had Christian Elements like with Gandalf. My parents hate DnD, but think THAT game is okay.
There are LOTS of different options for Non-Supernatural Tabeltop RPGs.
@@TheAyanamiRei And who can forget "Bunnies and Burrows"?
@@TheAyanamiRei Certainly, but D&D is the grandfather of the genre. It still being alive and prospering means everyone else, inevitably, has to be compared to it. It's the baseline for RPGs.
It's like if Rome was still around today and relevant - it would be damn hard talking about geopolitics without mentioning the empire that ruled most of Europe and laid the groundwork for literally every single Western civilization. Heck, to some extent that's the role the USA plays in world politics and it IS hard to talk global geopolitics without mentioning the US.
Mind you, as someone involved in the process of developing a TTRPG, I very much understand your frustration, but reality and expectations are what they are.
I needed to see this. I hated the idea of being public with d&d as I'm not woke with social issues, I'm just a black dude who wanna run/play in adventures with my friends/homies
There you go. Just play the game. 👍🏿
Your #3 is spot on. I went to an elementary school that was about 75% black. I remember hearing kids say to each other “you trynna be white” when referring to things that should be normal for anyone- using grammar, doing homework, drawing/painting during recess (instead of playing sports). I can definitely see this notion playing out as adults in the rpg world. It is a n ignorant and poisonous kind of peer pressure that always bothered me.
As a Metalhead, I'm always saddened by the apparent lack of black Metalheads. I wonder if it is (in part) due to peer pressure.
Black people: "We are NOT a MONOLITH!"
Also Black People: "TF, N? Y U NOT ACTING LIKE US??"
@@revylokesh1783 its societal man. How many youtube channels you see like "first time listening to audioslave" like how tf you never heard of audioslave bruh your 30
@@nunya5424 I'm not 30, but this is the first I'm hearing of them
@@kaiceecrane3884 probably haven't heard a lot of "white music" lead singer is unbelievably talented btw check out alice in chains too, the old stuff before their singer died.
Love how you presented this topic. As a Latino myself, I found it strange that this hobby isn’t widely accepted. I especially like how you brought up the black American culture. Great stuff and gained a sub from me!
I have thought the same -- TTRPG seems to be just a 'white' thing because others don't seem that interested which is fine by me... But I get very irritated when some minorities complain about the 'lack of representation' in TTRPGs. Hey guys, you are not interested. We are doing everything we can to be open and inclusive, but if you would prefer to do other things what can we do??? There are not that many professional white basketball players... is that a problem??? How about curling (shoving big stones around on the ice in the freezing cold using brooms to clear the way towards something or other -- that's all I know about curling)... not a lot of minorities represented there... is that a problem? Let's just all have fun doing whatever we like.
I subbed because of your honesty. I've been in this hobby since 1979. Started playing in the dead of night stuck out in a foreign desert waiting for our ride out. I can count on one hand the number of black or brown people who played tabletop rpg's. Across these decades, conflicts, changes.
So this video got randomly recommended to me by the Algorithm. Complete banger of a video. As a hispanic who was lucky enough to be part of an RPG group who come from various cultures this topic is real AF. Thanks for talking about it.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you so much sir! I’m a white college student who’s been looking to get my black friends and coworkers into TTRPGs and it’s so great to see expert advice on this subject.
Edit: A lot of what you’re saying really hits home, I’ve had black friends leave games “because it’s not black”, had friends stop expressing their nerd sides because their parents tell them “it’s not what black kids do” and had a friend who was told “he just wasn’t black enough” when he acted smart. You’re right though that there’s not much *I* can do to make more black peoples play ttrpgs, because ultimately they have to pick in up themselves, and all anyone else can do is make them feel welcome
We gotta take this one person at a time. It's like the adage asks: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Eventually, it will get eaten.
If they don’t want anything to do with tabletop RPGs, move on. If they continue to mislabel and malign, move on. Screaming at them with ad hominem attacks - which is how far too many people like to handle others who don’t think like them - is just an infantile way of saying I don’t like the fact you’re an individual and don't think like me. Those are TWs not worth the effort. Move on.
Them calling being smart as "not black enough" clearly doesn't help at all against racist stereotypes(or rather, ethnic prejudices)
Just a perspective of a black kid who grew up in a predominantly white area…
I was a always top or near the top of my classes at school. I can tell you I got a lot more crap from my white peers about “wanting to be white” than I did my black peers. I’m not saying black people didn’t say those things either, but I wouldn’t doubt your black friends also got crap doing nerdy stuff from all sides. You may want to think if stuff you said or stuff you didn’t defend them against may have turned them off.
I used to play RPGs with a groups of white kids in HS and they would make occasional bigoted jokes at my expense and I interpreted it as “oh, this is a white person thing”.. so I left.
You're friends who refused to play because "it's not Black" are racist. The same would apply to a person who referenced their ethnic alignment as a reason to not play would also be racist.
You're Black friends would play a game where they were gang members selling drugs, attacking elderly Asian women and shooting at innocent people?
@@duacot6633 that’s not racist. It’s bigoted. Racism has to do with thinking one race is superior to another. Like if a white person says hip hop is inferior to metal or punk because the culture of the black and brown people is too “ghetto”, or white musicians are more talented because they play instruments.
A black woman at my work was asking me about DnD the other day and she had that same deer in the headlights look in her eyes as I tried to explain it to her. But I may have to send her to this channel. She seemed actually interested to know about it, but she didn’t seem to be a “nerdy” type person, so there was a pop culture disconnect. I got her with the “it’s the game the kids played on Stranger Things.”
Anyway it was a good video, it was a perspective I hadn’t really considered.
As I watched this I was wondering if stranger things had done anything for getting more black kids involved since one of the members was black and it's so mainstream
Older or young woman?
I always explain it as an interactive story telling game. There's a guy who sets the scene, and other people are the main characters. They build a story together. That's really what it's about to me. Most people have played those party whodunnit games like Mafia or Werewolf, you could say it's kinda similar to that as well, but cooperative.
@@drowningmerman4256 Younger.
I hope you didn't send her this video, lol
Glad to see a brother speak on this. IMHO, I'm specifically glad more Black-majority groups are coming to the forefront PUBLICALLY - it's one thing to have Black-inclusiveness in private at-home games, but quite another to have public awareness of our Black nerd- and geekdom, especially for our youth to see! If you haven't already, check out Rivals of Waterdeep here on TH-cam. I also highly-recommend the Three Black Halflings podcast. Plenty of choices also available on Twitch these days as well.
Thank you so much for your comment! I've subbed to the RoW channel and the TBH podcast and will be sharing with my daughter and friends!
I think it's the COOLEST thing in the world to see black folks playing rpg's. You just don't normally see it and I think it could be a good thing.
Thanks for the info
Role models are so important. As an lgbtq person, I always feel better when I see media presentations that include people like me.
If you ever get the chance, I strongly recommend that you attend a PAX event. Aside from just being a great gaming convention, it includes tabletop gaming in addition to VG gaming (PAX Unplugged is entirely for tabletop gaming), but also, there's a very strong emphasis of inclusiveness for all sorts of various marginalized people. They encourage diversity in race, gender/sexual expression, age, and both physical and mental ability. The general culture there is that gaming is for everyone, even you, yes, you.
The TH-cam algorithm thought I needed to see this today, and I'm thankful for it. Instantly subscribed. There are a lot of great TTRPG content creators but diversity and expanded perspective is sorely needed. Looking forward to watching more of your content!
Same.
Completely agree with this. I think the biggest thing is accessibility in our community. I wasn't introduced to them until my freshman year of college. I relate it to playing video games in the early 80's, as I was one of the few kids that had a video game system in my community. My friends looked at it as weird or "being white," but once I introduced them to it, they became enthralled. Within a few years, most of my friends had gotten a console, even though most games we played revolved around sports like football and basketball. Now that I'm grown with adult children, I see them playing RPG's with their friends that are black and it is more common and not frowned upon. We as a community need to be more forward in talking and introducing our people to new things. If they like it, cool, if not, cool.
Solid video and good points all around.
Bringing up the "Satanic Panic" of the olden days made me remember my childhood where my mom didn't like me playing anything fantasy based, but scifi was acceptable given our family's love of Star Trek and Star Wars.
Another factor, though it probably could be rolled into one of the points, is disposable income. Some folks just don't have the money to get game stuff. Now yeah we know as gamers it's really just a book and the true wallet killer would be the minis (lol) but neophytes wouldn't know that unless we guided them.
Also the whole idea of roleplaying games being "a white person's game" is buried deep in the bones, hell even Weird Al puts light to that in White and Nerdy. Which is not shocking given how most fantasy based settings we know offhand are more or less "Let's put magic in European settings". Though I am heartened to see some kickstarters where people are trying to put together African or Middle East inspired settings out in some of these game systems. I mean RPGs should be shared storytelling, nice to see other stories and heroes getting in the blood of the culture.
Though yeah a big hurdle for our kind, the gamers, is just how prevalent D&D has been and always will be. I mean for outsiders it's THE GAME people speak of even if here we are busting our butts playing stuff like Vampire or Mechwarrior or Mutants and Masterminds, etc.
Well said
There are a handful of non-European based campaign settings in D&D. Though Pathfinder is a very diverse setting.
@@AlbinoAxolotl1993 That's where I'm happy, if we can pivot the public mind from D&D to things like Pathfinder, we might get more folks in who would be less intimidated by the old stereotypes. Just a thought. It's a steady and slow travel but we can do it.
During my childhood, I wasn't allowed to watch harry Potter or Pirates of The Carribean because my parents thought the magic elements in the films were satanic.
I think it does a disservice to our communities that D&D is the only one that people are aware of. If someone is part of a Religious Household, they may not even be aware that there's ALTERNATIVES, ones that wouldn't offend their religious beliefs.
I mean there's AT LEAST 3 different Star Wars Tabletop RPGs I think.
I am sure there was one made for Star Trek as well.
Firefly doesn't have any supernatural elements that I can remember.
An yeah! Kickstarter has had some GREAT Tabletop RPGs with Diversity! As someone part of the LGBTQ+ I've been very happy to see that being so embraced. Not to mention Game Designers being more mindful of adding better Diversity Inclusion with Race as well as Gender & Sexuality.
"I'm saying this for y'all's benefit, I'm condescending, alright?" Absolutely amazing line. Mad respect
It also happens to be a correct use of the word "condescending" since it doesnt only mean being sanctimonious.
I was reading a dnd book at the hospital where I was waiting to be seen for a bad infection and ingrown toenail. A big rather intimidating black woman started shouting at me how I was falling to corruption and playing The Devil's Game and going to hell in sin. It's not a matter of color, it's a matter of upbringing and culture. And irritates me no end. Some of my best friends in DnD come from all over. the game united us, and though we went our separate ways eventually, I still remember my group with love. And that's what it comes down to. Love.
How long ago did this happen?
In the 80s, DnD had a bad reputation for being involved in the occult (along with heavy metal music, MTV, and so on....). Folks will believe whatever they want to believe, sad to say.
@@kyndread71 Happened in the mid 90's, actually. Kaiser Permanente, Woodland Hills, California.
"It's not a matter of color, it's a matter of upbringing and culture." Culture, perhaps African American culture more so than any other, is so intertwined with color that you can hardly talk about one with out touching on the other. Culture largely dictates day to day experience and upbringing so I have to disagree with your statement, it is very much a matter of color.
while I doubt that this is something I will personally experience at some point, I've always had in mind my response if someone starts waving satanic panic stuff at me: "Listen, I spend most of my time in this game killing devils and demons, hunting down the undead. it's not about worshipping them, it's about fighting them. it's about being a hero." might not change any minds, but at least get it out there for those that need to hear it.
I think that's less about being black and more about being a certain flavor of religious. My mother was a sweet woman in a lot of ways, but until the day she died she believed that D&D was a game about summoning demons in spite of me being a DM and explaining the game to her. Any time she heard about me playing, she'd get sad. The problem was, she was a new mother at the start of the infamous "satanic panic" of the 80's and couldn't get past the propaganda, even decades later. If you can't tell by my profile picture, I and my mother are quite white.
That was enlightening.
I just found your channel and I am looking forward to seeing the rest of your videos.
Hey, hey! Awesome sauce! Glad to have you on board.
Thanks for making this video. I related to a lot of it as someone who has enjoyed computers / video games since I was very young.
When I played DnD back in the 80s, we just thought of playing and finding people who wanted to join us. I honestly never thought about the racial makeup of the group. I just wanted players in the group. Years later, I got a co worker interested in table top Sci Fi wargames because her and her husband were Sci Fi fans. They were Black but I considered them as potential gamers due to the shared love of all things Sci Fi. Thank you for the food for thought.
Same here.
This has been my way of thinking also. I gladly accept anyone. If you happen to be a different gender or ethnicity that just adds to my enjoyement. We all have different life experiences that can add to a story/game.
Exactly. I never really cared for the race of my friends. I just saw them as my friends. Looking back they were from a vast variety of ethnic backgrounds.
In the 1980s and a teen with the stupidity of the Satanic Panic non-sense it was hard to just find players.
@@keiths9281 It was if you didn't already have a gaming group. If your friends weren't religious, you could still get them to play. Thank God we have alot more systems to choose from and they don't involve spell casting. I could probably get those same religious types to play a game set in biblical times with the players trying to leave Egypt or avoid Romans. 😀😀
My God Man! This was really good. I'm Puerto Rican and it goes exactly the same way with most Hispanics I have met. Only difference my group growing up as kids was all Ricans until we went to college, where we met other people who played RPG's.
I got hit with the 'why you acting white' bit as well.
On Reason #4 My mom still says this about D&D and she's 60! She calls them 'Juegos del Diablo' (Games of the Devil).
One reason I didnt hear you say is Socio-Economic Class - Where you are on the social ladder also limits your exposure to RPG's, you may play them on a computer console, but making the transition to TTRPG is on another level.
When I started going to Con's I rarely saw other Black or Hispanic players, they were rarer than women at the tables, but I did see Asians. Today at cons I see more brown people but not anywhere near national demographic percentages.
Your comment about the tokenism rings strong in many of the brown people I see in the various streams - they look uninvolved in the games, uninformed, ... like tacked on.
Hoping this gets more views, but the YT algorithm is gonna bury you, the title doesn't fit the narrative being pushed.
Hey, hey! Thanks for your response. Appreciate it and your observations. Glad to have you on board.
The socio-economics is a good point. A lot of these books (particularly DnD, which imo became more about churning out quantity of products instead of quality references / supplements) get pricey pretty fast.
No way, man. I grew up poor as a church mouse. And had to literally walk miles one way to buy products, I grew up rural. The other kids I played with in the 80s were also poor. We saved, scrimped and bought products.
And we played. But like other groups here, I tended to keep it to myself so I didn’t get picked on for being a nerd.
Guess what? The algorithm spat this at me today. Had to watch it. Some of it I knew, but not the background for it. Being a white female, some of the cultural stuff just isn't shared between us. I just didn't know just how different our cultures can be when we live in the same place.
Bro, same here. I'm Latino and I grew up with other Latinos telling me and my friends that we were "being white" for liking D&D and other games like that.
It's sucks to me as a white gamer that the black community turns it into a race thing. As a white guy in a very white area of America, I was just considered a loser nerd, and race didn't play into it. I can't imagine being seen as a race traitor of sorts just for wanting to kill orcs as an elf ranger, sheesh. A first generation American-Jamaican guy was at our Magic the Gathering session last night, cause he works with one of our players, and I loved explaining how the game worked and showing off all the cool cards, and he seemed really into it. I hope more barriers get taken down and more people can enjoy nerd hobbies.
EDIT: Great vid, you earned a subscriber
I came for the clickbait, but stayed for the interesting discussion! Hopefully we can break down these barriers and suck more cultures etc into the TTRPG community so we can have more varied stories and story telling.
It's not a "token" black player. BP only make up 15% of the population lol. So if 1 out of 10 is black ..that's about the math
Bruh, blacks are a very small portion of the POPULATION let alone "hey are you into this niche hobby?"
Hell I didn't know it was even around, same with card games
@@elgatochurro less than 14%
@@BOBANDVEG some night say... 13%
@@elgatochurro everyone can thank abortion
As a white guy, what I noticed from my own perspective was that the number of women / minorities involved in any RPG's exploded in the early 90's with "Vampire: The Masquerade" -- the first black gamer I ever met was at a Vampire LARP.
I think that one game removed a lot of the stigma of RPG's and opened the floodgates for a whole new group of players entering the hobby.
Vtm was how I got into tabletop
I think it's more complex than that. By the early 90's some of the Stigma of being a nerd was going away. Guys like Gates and Jobs had made bank by being nerds that sold things to other nerds, and there was a growing acceptance of Star Trek and Star Wars fandom as not being something abnormal and to be mocked. But, yeah VtM had a sexiness to it that made it much more attractive to communities that hadn't gotten into the wargaming and pulp fiction inspired earlier games. The first time I knew the hobby was getting cool, I went into a book store and found two teen girls maybe 5 years younger than me at the time, in the floor with an open copy of 'LA by Night' in front of them, and they were reading it together, and as I walked up, one of them said, "He's in torpor during the day on top of elevators. Can you imagine? Oh that's just so sexy."
Now I'm not saying the VtM community was necessarily healthy, but yeah it did attract players that previously would have not seen the attraction.
@@celebrim1 interesting insight
I hate to play VTM, but that's good hear!
Met my husband in a vampire masquerade game, its now been 20+ years
Thank you for sharing your perspective. Subscribed!
Yeah, a lot of this is very true. Black American culture is like any form of American culture, conservative, stubborn, and adverse to trying things differently.
Growing up in a predominately black community, I didn't even know tabletop RPGing was a thing until I went to summer camp as a kid. Honestly, I didn't see the appeal of it back then since I was more of a videogamer, but I didn't knock those kids that enjoyed that type of stuff. But I did pick up the vibe that it was "nerdy" and as I got older, I did start to see that a large swath of black people saw tabletop gaming as a "white people thing." In fact, it was actually pretty hard finding black kids who were into fantasy in general when I was growing up in the early 00s. Everyone was obsessed with the newest Bad Boys movie or some obscure ghetto movie that nobody heard of.
Black American cultures do have this adverse obsession with retaining a "black card" which means you have to fit into this socially, often always stereotypical archetype of what a black person is supposed to be like. The original Fresh Prince did an excellent job portraying this dynamic in one of their best episodes, and I've seen it with my one-two eyes growing up.
I genuinely did not start seeing a majority of black people get into fantasy until GOT was wrapping up. But as it stands with tabletop RPGing, it's still very much a rarity.
Excellent points. This is worth responding to in my next video. Look for it. 👊🏾
I can only speak for myself, as a child of the 80's who got started in the 2nd wave of RPGs, just as the AD&D books were being published, and the Basic D&D boxed set was published, and the hobby was first reaching a wide audience. Certainly none of my friends would have objected to a black kid at the table. Players were players. But two things prevented that from ever happening.
1) First, understand that being a nerd in the 1980s was not cool at a level that the a modern audience might not be able to understand. It meant you would be subject to a lot of semi socially approved of violence and mockery. Our table was not a table of cool people whom other teens wanted to be seen as friends with. Our table was essentially a nerd street gang that formed up out of self-defense because we were tired of getting beaten up. But as bad as it would have been for us lower economic class white nerds, the situation would have been far worse for any potential black friends we knew that might have joined us. The few black nerds we knew had to do their best to hide even as much as that they did their homework for fear of being set upon by their black peers and beaten. If they took an interest in academic things openly, if they liked science or computers or heaven forbid comics, roleplaying games, wargames, Star Trek, Star Wars, and all the rest of the stuff we geeked out about, they garnered comments like, "What are you some sort of oreo?", "You trying to be white?" from their black peers. So the idea that any of them might want to join the nerds openly is far fetched.
I mean there were similar things going on with teen girls at the time. It's not that we nerds would have in any way tried to exclude a girl from playing, and in fact two girls we knew seemed to be RPG curious. We would have loved to have had female social companionship. The problem was that these girls were popular, but loving nerdy things or even letting it be known that they were as intelligent as they actually were and not the empty headed bimbos that they pretended to be in order to be popular, was not going to (at least in their mind) help their social standing.
2) Of the few black nerdy people we knew that might have had an interest in it, they almost always came from very conservative religious backgrounds. I myself came from a religious background, and as a result of certain poorly conceived elements of art and occult included in the early D&D game, this was a problem. So almost certainly, the few nerd types whose parents highly encouraged them to value education, also had parents who would have highly discouraged any interest in RPGs at the time (which lets face it, was mostly D&D and other TSR publications).
I'm actually really pleasantly surprised, because I have had so many encounters with younger black people new to the hobby who rage against my generation as if we had oppressed black people out of participation in hobby in some way, imagining I guess that we in the 1980's lived in a world where being a nerd was really cool and we had lots of people trying to get into the community and we were gatekeeping it in some fashion like we had some sort of stature and authority. But that's nothing like my experience, and it sounds like to me you are old enough to have had some first hand experience with the actual problems faced by members of the black community at the time.
Just found your channel. Great content!
Video popped up in my feed and I gotta say, I'm glad it did. Appreciate your perspective and philosophy! I'd say the only thing less common that a black player (I had one at my table for a couple years) is a Pastor player...The Satanic Panic is a big deal in every church community I think. I have never had another pastor at my table. I've never even felt comfortable sharing the hobby with any other pastors (especially since I primarily DM that game which shall not be mentioned), or even many congregants. I usually keep it on the DL. I grew up in fundamentalist churches during the 80s, so I might be just living out my own fears. But it was great to see another Pastor who plays.
You just got a new subscriber. As someone who has been playing RPGs since 1978, practically all of my life, I am grateful for you and for this video. Instead of pointing fingers and placing blame, you share some truths and some insights. If more people could forgive, be patient, and be kind, I think there would be a lot more opportunity for diversity at the gaming tables and conventions.
I'm just looking to get into RPG's, just happened this vid popped in my recommended. Quality content and an outstanding breakdown. Vid needs more views.
In the 2010's I was living in Berlin, Germany. During that time, I was blessed with the luck being part of a large tabletop/rpg/dnd group. The group was made up from a broad international cast of folks, including five Americans, four of them black. They were probably the most dedicated and probably obsessed players I have ever played with.
Thanks for your candor ! We appreciate your contributions
Brought here by the RPG algorithm, and I'm glad to be here! This is a really excellent, informative video, I've never seen the cultural issues covered so well, incredibly interesting.
This is definitely a fantastic response to the issues that have been going on, especially in the last decade.
Awesome work overall, you've got a new subscriber. I hope you succeed at whatever you do!
Oh my God. Dude, there’s no one else who will say it like this man. I just found you because of this video, and I’m gonna be honest I’m gonna go binge the rest of your stuff. I agree with all your opinions, and I wish more people understood this. I’ve had a few Black people at my tables, even a few guys actually from Africa. One of my long-term players is from Egypt, and I’ve talked with him about this a few times. It’s really sad what the destruction of individualism is doing, but yeah. Thanks for speaking up man.
This video is two years old, but truer words have n ver been spoken. I’m a 59 year old Hispanic gamer and I’ve only ever played war games with black people at conventions. I’ve never had an opportunity to locate a player, such as yourself, and play locally. I hope one day to meet someone like you to play my favorite RPGs before the Lord calls me home. God bless and keep you sir. Big fan of your channel now that I’ve discovered you. Will recommend to others!
Thank you kindly. 👍🏿
I am just now finding your channel. Subscribed immediately. “The black community suppresses the individual.” Thank you for saying this, it needs to be better known.
Amen. I’ve never had another white person say to me “you can’t do that, it’s not white.” Because that’s ridiculous. No one person should be forced to be a monolith of someone’s perception of a culture.
I remember my sister and I moving and starting 4th grade at a school in the projects that was all black but the two of us. Absolutely have to agree with your particular point about black people and saying someone is acting "acting white". I have to assume my presence exacerbated the matter a little bit being the token white kid in the grade, but I heard that several times a day every day. The things it would be in reference to were truly depressing in their scope and/or importance: Enjoying learning (reading, grammar, math, history etc were looked at as either fake or useless), dressing normally, showing emotion, refraining from fighting, enjoying fantasy or sci fi. Every culture has its problems, good on you for being brave enough to point out yours out AND give constructive feedback
You actually gained a subscriber,I'm new to the world of rpg and a black person voicing their concerns with this hobby is exactly what gives me the confidence to think I'm starting to learn about it from the right perspective.
Hey man, I just learned a whole lot from you. Thank you for sharing!
Glad to hear it! Keep it locked in and happy gaming! 👨🏾🦲
My friend Darren that played with us commented that he hid his Forgotten Realms books from his friends the way he hid porn mags from his mom. It was a dirty secret that he ‘played pretend’ cause it was perceived as being weak among his non-gamer friends. He couldn’t wear his game credentials on his sleeve because of peer pressure and his friends clowning on him so hard about it.
Your frank talks are the reason I subscribed. Thanks for everything you do.
Oh! I want to also say that I've seen guys in the military all playing RPGs. This was 20 years ago. A lot of them were black. And I think one was even a girl. These were a mixture of regular Navy and Navy Seals who lived in barracks on base. Those in the military tend to be on top of things when it comes to gaming.
Military players. I can imagine there are some geeks among our armed forces. Awesome sauce!
I really want a good female RPG Elite in my group. It has been a good minute since I've had one, and only one all my years playing. Not that I haven't run across some potential candidates. However, when I refer them to my What Is an RPG Elite? video, I get crickets. That means not RPG Elite which means it's better they didn't respond.
@@RPGElite I send candidates to my Tabletop series playlist to see how I role-play. Only 1% graduate.
@@RPGElite There are always a lot of geeks in the military churn, Enlisted and Officer alike. I was gonna post a similar response to the above, as it's where I also saw the most cultural crossover into RPGs. Exposure to games there is pretty high for everyone tho, as you often find yourself with nothing to do, stuck with folks/friends with a lot of different interests, and no one to tell you you shouldn't give it a shot and have some fun with those friends. I do think it's changing tho in general and the stigmas you mentioned are beginning to fall away (finally). Your observations were spot on. Subscribed!
One of the greatest Game Masters and prolific miniature painters I ever met was a Navy Seal! His background was French Arabic and he served in Vietnam and the Gulf Wars ( eventually made Commander ) . He ran a wonderful game called Empire of the Petal Throne which was decidedly non- European centric !
P.S. he was also a Jesuit penitent , a martial artist and a linguist …
@@RPGElite So many of us who have or continue to serve are about that geek life. The first time I ever rolled dice was in a barracks room back in Iwakuni Japan in 2000. It took me almost 20 years to roll dice again. And yes, I was the only black person in the group.
TTRPGing since 1979.
THIS is my first exposure to your channel. I've thought about your points for a few days since watching and I can't think of any valid reasons beyond what you have stated. Happy to see a Black man not only PLAYING ttrpgs, but RUNNING them, AND educating the rest of us with a ttrpg TH-cam channel.
Gonna go check out the rest of your videos.
Keep 'em comin'.
When I was stationed in Korea for the second time, I tried to get to know some of the role-playing guys in the barracks. Each time I inquired into playing a game with them, I was turned down and told they would let me know when they would have an opening in the game, so I tried to make do with what they told me, and tried to talk lore with them, and each time I was either given the cold shoulder or out and out brushed off, so, with my book case of lore, I had to deal with watching them collect dust. That was until I got placed on a new track and in a new platoon, and the first time my new track commander NCO came down to my room with me to clean our weapons from a field problem he was amazed at my collection, Dragon Lance, BattleTech tech manuals, novels, D&D monster manuals, and other RPG related books for running games and stuff, he asked if I was in a group, I told him no, him and some other guys he knew invited me to one of their games, and that NCO of mine was from the Bahamas. Him and his group welcomed me with open arms and told me every time they were running a game or if I wanted to come and hang out when they were running a game.
That said, I hear a lot of gamers on You Tube bragging about how open and accepting they were and are of new players, well, from my experience, whenever I tried to get to know or tried to make friends with gamers, I was always meet with a door to the face, or if I was allowed to a game, I was either belittled with my character, or told to shut up and just roll the dice when I wanted to ask questions, treated like a fifth wheel and made to feel awkward. At one session I was allowed to sit in on, the GM's wife made a gay character and told me I had to play him, or I was not allowed to play, and when I asked why he was gay, she told me because I looked gay, and it was either that or I could go home. And at one point even told to just go home because I really was not wanted there, and I was not worth the effort for a new player courtesy. That black NCO from the Bahamas was the first truly welcoming gamer to extend an invitation to sit down and play and inquire about tabletop gamming. Never before or after, have I even felt welcoming or wanted, or invited to gaming sessions.
I am sorry, but for all the gripes I hear on You Tube and read about from tabletop players in the community and about how they are "Welcoming and are always happy to welcome new players" that may be true for them, but my experience, has been just the opposite, the only time the groups I knew wanted me as a player, was either as a token offering, or they wanted to have a new player that they could just throw away as a sacrifice of some sort in the game, cannon fodder, or just make it appear that they were welcoming, when in fact, they made the game so awkward that I wouldn't feel welcomed back.
Sorry to hear that. All I can say is that all the groups that I've been in and have known people in were very welcoming to new players, or if they didn't have room in their group they could recommend another.
That really sucks, unfortunately there are plenty of elitists, but most of the people I've met are super nice and friendly but of course I have had run ins with a few bad apples that would have completely turned me off had they been one of my first few encounters.
This sounds a lot like my experience as a black man with comics and manga in the early 2000s. Sometimes when I would go to the cons I was always made to feel like an outsider or that I was an unwelcomed thug.
I was curious and excited to express my love of the hobby only to get a cold shoulder from the non blacks. Thank God it's A LOT better nowadays.
This is really insightful. Thank you for making this video. 💜
Thank you for watching. 👊🏾
I think that having a pastor or other religious figure that can advocate for RPGs is of great benefit to the hobby as well. I remember the Satanic Panic and was fortunate enough to be able to find an article about a member of the clergy who ran a game, and show it to my parents to make it clear to them that I wasn't being inducted into a cult.
I had my D and D books destroyed by a Latino Catholic guy. It’s definitely not just a black issue for sure. The Satanic Panic was predominantly propagated by white southern churches.
The Satanic Panic was also so incredibly astroturfed. There is no actual reason for Christian people to fear this stuff - and I honestly think that if it wasn't for a lot of the socio-political machinations going on between Nixon and Reagan, it wouldn't have happened.
During the satanic panic against DnD, many of our nuclear submarine crews were playing DnD while out to sea. It was something you could do in a small, confined space. Thank God the devil didn't possess them and make them launch their nukes.
Late to the channel...but looking forward to taking a deep dive into your channel!
You should give yourself more credit.
This was actually a very good video.
Keep doing what you're doing bud :)
I literally laughed so hard at your sigh @19:15 btw !!
Thanks a ton! Glad you enjoyed it. Nice to know I can at least make one person laugh on a video about such a weighty topic.
Happy gaming!
@@RPGElite I love your approach to handling this in general.... oh yeah, Max said to say "Legion of Myth sent you."
Found this video, I am subscribing to you. I don't have a group and I'm going remember what you say when looking for a group or members. I experienced D&D around the time of the Satanic Panic an was gone for a bit and got into it when my daughter got interested. I can't wait to hear what wisdom your experience has given you as I get back into RPG playing.
Thanks for the love. Appreciate it. I don't know how much wisdom I have but I'll give you what I got. 😉
4:15 I see your point. We had to steal books when I was a kid. I had to come up with alternative dice... it was a lot of work.
I really enjoyed this video. If everyone spoke with this level of honesty and intelligence, the world would be a better place.
Im so happy i found this channel. Being black, growing up loving fantasy and the like, i didnt think I was going to find other black folks to play. Over on discord, a small group of friends of mine did a one shot, and each one of us are black. When the DM asked me to join, since she was gathering all her black ttrpg friends, my first gasp was, "Wait there's more than just you and me?!"
It was so fun. And im so ready to play with them again. I really hope my black TTRPG people will find their way to each other and have as much fun as we all did!
It's not something I thought about a ton but yeah up until pretty recently we've only really had Lou Wilson (and even he hasn't been around that long) and B.Dave Walters. It's been really cool to see Aabria Iyengar rocket up in popularity and it was so cool seeing a majority black cast on misfits and magic but I really hope the steam keeps up and we continue seeing more rep going forward.
That thing you said about
"That's not black"
Resonates with me so hard in ways you don't even understand.
You're completely right in that aspect because not only did black people sometimes say that but white kids at my private school would say that to me too.
Trying to get the black community into something like tabletop games will be rather hard as we essentially have to show the benefits of it to the black community. We have to show the black community that we are a part of it just as much as the white community.
We have to make it clear that this is all our own interest and not for some type of racial reasons.
True. But we probably need to change America first.
Just subscribed BECAUSE of this video. Love understanding new perspectives, especially when they can bring value to me and my community.
Appreciate the education!
It was really cool to see you talk about this. I've been lucky enough to not really experience the "you're not black" treatment. Just in jest from my uncle, mainly for loving metal. He's very much a nerd too, even got me into anime and videos games when I was a kid. My mom was really the one who experienced this growing up. Having loved bands like Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue and Dio. None of the black kids at her school wanted to hang out with her, but the white kids did, because they were all into the same music scene. Which she probably got more flack for. So it's really awesome to see someone with a similar perspective talk about this, thanks for that!
An interesting insight! I have been playing TTRPG for 35 years and have only found in the last 5 years or so that people of any colour are a little more open about playing a TTRPG. There was such a stigma associated with this game from most people in general, regardless of colour. Anyway, I always thought of D&D as an activity that brings people together that transcends our cultures, colours, sex, politics etc, and that can’t be a bad thing. Thanks and take care!
So you don't like D&D OR Critical Role, and your channel focuses on ttrpg content?
Instantly subscribed.
LOL! 😂 Made me bust out laughing when I saw this. Kudos. 👍🏾
Yep, don't like Critical Roll ether, watched it one time that was enough, just like all my D&D sessions, though Matt is on a High Tier level as a DM, but that is not needed to have fun with parties. Use to be primarily a DM, but did that for 30 year, I prefer to play now LOL. Got lazy.
Dnd is the gateway, but lots of people go on. I did not care for critical role, ok, just not anything that seemed exceptional.
I dig your lands of doom box. I grew up playing marvel rpg. The ultimate powers book was the best.
@@RPGElite respect for playing trpgs for the genre and community, not just for brand/monetization which I seen alot of ppl did when they jump into dnd.
bud Critical Roll is the top echelon, wtf u talking about
Man! I have so many questions!
But first, I have huge respect and gratitude for you saying all of this with a clarity I've never heard from anyone before. (And, you're right, it really IS a place where most fear to tread).
I'm apparently as old as you and have been playing about as long as you, so this video really hit home. True to what you said, I've never been part of a very large group and, among the 3-5 of us at the table, it was rare to have a black person (or any person of color) at the table. (Interestingly, it was probably at least as rare to have a female at the table, which is obviously a different thing, but makes me wonder if any of the same dynamics were at work). I did see examples of every one of your reasons for this:
1, ignorance was common among all groups, but it probably did affect women and people of color more because you really had to be the kind of person to hang out in hobby shops and read books before buying them to get into the game (even blank character sheets were sold separately, you had to buy different ones for different classes. There was a lot of overlap with video gamers (which, at the time, was 8-bit-if-youre-lucky), so everyone involved had to have a lot of spare time high suspension of disbelief).
2, no interest I 100% agree. It didn't help things that the biggest hobby shop in my neighborhood was also a headshop. Also, I'm sure it doesn't help that playing rpgs takes a lot of effort, creativity, and cooperation, whereas playing established sports, card games, or board games of the time required almost exclusively just following very clear rules and treating almost everyone else involved as an opponent.
3, Black American culture... sadly my group definitely did hear "that's not Black" but we also heard "that's not cool", "that's not healthy", "that's not Christian" and plenty of words that can be paraphrased as "that's not hetero-normative." It's very interesting to me that so many of these overlap in places. It seemed almost every self-identified group was trying to come up with a reason of saying "that's not us," but the Black American culture always had (at least) one extra hurdle to jump over, "that ain't Black," and I wonder how much that also overlapped with the others.
4, religious stigma: Again, I 100% agree. The satanic panic was in full effect (I grew up in Memphis, TN). This was huge, but, in my experience, the Black church was at least slightly more permissive than my own (bleach-white) Baptist church. In my church camp, we couldn't even play "go fish" because the cards (standard playing cards) were "clearly" surrogates for tarot cards and... I don't know, I guess they were afraid we'd have some lively game of crazy 8's and accidentally summon a demon? (And, then, said demon was probably going to teach us all to dance laciviously... like... Elvis??)
...so, the next thing you did was to open this up to us commenters to add questions/observations. In that spirit, I want to suggest a couple more. Do either of these hold any water in your opinion?
5?, exclusion by omission (implicit ethnic prejudice)? Elephant-in-the-room, a ton of the earliest groups were white and a lot of those (probably my own included) were slow to invite Black folks... or girls... or anybody that didn't look almost exactly like us. Being clear, I don't recall a single racial slur or even "don't ask him to play, he's Black" comment. But I do think this was going on in a more implicit way. Maybe rpg-gamers just assumed that almost everybody was "too cool" (see reason #3) to want to play. Maybe they just assumed that their Black friends were too cool, too Christian, too macho, etc. to like rpgs. (Even we players ourselves weren't beyond buying into the existing stereotypes. Also, invitations could backfire, so their was always some level of fear that whoever you invited would tell your mom, or your principal, or even maybe attack you (e.g. a guy once spit on my friend -- that's as far as it went, although he threatened a lot more). Confessing to being an rpg player back in the mid-80's was pretty close to confessing to being a masturbator (then suggesting everybody read the "player's handbook...")
6? basic survival? The rpg subculture (per all the above) had a ton of strikes against it. Does it make sense for anyone to want to paint a target on themselves? True, you probably weren't going to be physically attacked just for being an rpg player, but probably 30-40% of the people who found out you were would assume you were involved in drug culture, or homosexuality (still very stigmatized back then, during the AIDS crisis), or satanism, or suffering from mental illness (also full of stigma, even worse back then than now). Did you see Tom Hanks in "Mazes and Monsters"? The ignorance (#1) didn't need much fermentation time to become irrational fear.
Anyway, sorry for the long reply, and thanks very much again for such a great post!
Well said, and your reply fills in some holes in the video. A contrast to TTRPG would be the Fighting Game Community - there are LOTS of Black American players and (semi-)pros. The reason why is because in the late 90's and 2000's fighting games became really accessible - once you got the components (which could be cheap after years on the market), just pick up and play. Also, you didn't need to do prep work and gather several people who did the same AND meet your same bar of loving fantasy. "Video games" quickly fell out of the category of "not Black" thanks to that (and I was around for when it WAS in that category).
Your point about the Black American version of "not cool" hits the nail on the head. I'm not trying to downplay how caustic the "that's not Black" or "that's for White people" idea is, but in reality, it ends up being an ethnically enhanced version of "that's lame" or "that's for nerds". This arose because being Black in the US has meant that you MUST have some connection to 'The Black Community' to (socially) survive (because otherwise, you're adrift with no support when Black-specific issues come up). It's a shame that weak-minded people use that to shame those who want to do things outside "the norm", but it's important to put it in context - this is something that's common to humanity as a social species, not specific to 'The Black Community'.
Thank you for your insight on this topic. I've been working really hard to make my table more inclusive and welcoming to everyone, so having this perspective really gives me a lot to consider and take onto account
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences, RPG Elite. I hope you’ve been subsequently introduced to Three Black Halflings. Their podcast is both laugh out loud funny and deeply insightful with regards to the issues of race in TTRPG. Also, their episodes of homebrew D&D game play are very crunchy and very entertaining with role playing. Everyone on this thread please go check out Three Black Halflings.
Great video. Thx for doing this.
I'm assuming the young black lady DM you were talking about is Aabria Iyengar, she's just terrific.
Powerful video and very illuminating! Playing my first ttrpg this year and I hope to just be a positive part of the community! Much love everyone
Great attitude to have. 👍🏾
I am a White guy, that being said. My wife and I adopted twin boys who happen to be black. My 13 year old boys love D&D. In our version of the world there are not just Northern European types. We have a full spectrum of people. I try to be mindful of the lack of people of color in the D&D world.
First video I've ever seen by you.
And guess what, *I subbed*
ETHNIC PREJUDICE! The sigh of relief hearing someone else at least mention it...thank you so much for that, Sir 🙌🏿🔥
Sub and liked. I want more people playing TTRPG's regardless of ethnicity. This is one of the most fulfilling hobbies I personally have.
Anyways, keep up the content and hopefully we can bring more people into this thing we love so much.
How does Mike Pondsmith (R. Talsorian Games - Cyberpunk, Mekton, Witcher) fit into this topic?
Thank you for sharing your passion for gaming, honesty, fearlessness, open challenges, and call to action. Your understanding of the broader American culture, the African-American experience, Church culture and hysteria, and bringing it together with personal experience helped make this video for me! You have inspired me to grow my gaming circle and to think of what true inclusiveness could look like. Please continue to keep at it! This was so refreshing to see and hear. Cheers!
This was an extremely level headed and reasonable discussion. I know at the beginning you mentioned you might lose subscribers on this one, but I can tell you you gained mine. Looking forward to watching more of your content.
I ran Pathfinder Society weekly at a local store for almost three years. This was back in the first edition Pathfinder days. For those who aren't familiar with it, Pathfinder Society (PFS) was designed for walk-in play. There was practically no barrier to entry at all. The game was published under the Open Gaming License and the full rules were available online for free. There were a bunch of pre-generated characters printed and ready so you didn't even need a character. They didn't even need dice since I always had plenty. It was all built around standardized, one-shot scenarios with standardized rewards so there was no time commitment beyond that session. It cost $5 but that included $2 in store vouchers so it was really only $3. I was the guy who ran the low tier intro scenarios so I met all of the new players. Anyone with a desire to play and a few bucks could walk in, sit down and play. In almost three years, I saw one black player. He was a white-collar professional type. I think he was an engineer of some sort. He had to move for his job so he wasn't around for long. That's the only black player I saw in 32-33 months of running PFS every week.
Mike Pondsmith is an rpg god, I might have started on "red box" d&d, but I cut my teeth on cyberpunk 2020. Louis Porter Jr's Obsidian Apocalypse was an AMAZING setting (I haven't had a chance to check out his Neoexodus line of products, but I've heard its good.)
also at the start of the video you wanted an example of a black persons channel for rpg's, then you mentioned a black woman were you referencing Jessa from crafts and conquests, or Aabria Iyengar from critical role? I know Aabria doesn't own the critical role channel, but she does hold a pretty important role as a regular dungeon master.
anyway, I appreciate your up front attitude about this subject. I have subscribed :-)
YESSS! I've seen him do interviews, and (IIRC)his son actually DMed a lets play I saw, great stuff!
I got to meet Mr. Pondsmith at the last PAX Unplugged; great guy!!!
I agree with everything said here. Topics like these should be discussed more often.
Damn, this is an awesome video. Liked!!! And thank you for making it!
Glad you liked it. 👍🏾
Subbed. I want to know more about what you think. " Ethnic prejudice " is SUCH an apt description for what is usually called racism. VERY well put Sir. I have had a few black friends who got in to DnD pretty much as soon as they were invited to try it out, but some of them were very apprehensive for most of the reasons you have listed here and you are right they were very very few compared to the white kids I knew who gamed. I think a lot of people think it is more due to cultural representations but I never found this to be the case. Everybody generally just makes the characters they want to play and finds a way to tell the story of who they are where they came from how they got to where they are IF the characters were not just standard fantasy type characters anyway. I had the immense pleasure to be part of a gaming group that ran through out the entirety of my 9th grade year in which there were 9 regulars and probably 5 or 6 people who would drop in and out so we tended to just runt heir characters in their absence. In that group 6 of the regulars were white including me, two players were Indian. they were brothers one of whom was not one of the regular players, and two black guys, one of whom was actually really shocking to me because he was SO not your typical " nerd " type guy and I hate to use that word but we are talking about 1992 Middle Mississippi..... you just did not see a lot of hip cats and tough guys or sports dudes playing DnD. Anyway. We had a great time and just played the game. it was a great group, we all experienced the stigma associated with gaming at the time but we had a great time together all the same.
Same
VERY interesting video! I’ve been in the RPG community since 1976 ! I’ve run open gaming at libraries, Conventions and special events. It’s the PERCEIVED Cultural hindrances that keep people from exploring our hobby.
I find a great inroad , in multiple cases , is shared cultural influences like movies and video games. Youngsters , may be interested, but do not want to be seen as “ nerdy “. Think of it as the Erkle Effect . Interestingly ,my group has always included both evangelicals and Asian Americans . I have no idea why!
Keep asking the uncomfortable questions!
May your dice always roll hot!
Thank ya kindly for the love and support. Appreciate it much.