Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Wizard of the Coast hired Pinkertons to steal from MTG fan who showed off a set of cards maybe two weeks before the official reveal date. (Read More Here).
The Gathering leaks are nothing new. Whether by accident or on purpose, reviewers and gamers with early access to new sets of card packs have, pretty regularly, shown off card pulls before they were allowed to do so. Usually the consequences for leakers are simple and effective: Wizards of the Coast, which publishes Magic: The Gathering, typically refuses to allow those individuals early access in the future. It’s slightly more unusual for Wizards to have allegedly sent Pinkerton agents to a man’s house in order to retrieve “stolen goods.”
Wizards of the Coast commits to engaging with cultural consultants on every one of its Dungeons & Dragons releases going forward. The announcement was listed as part of the latest batch of errata for Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, a campaign book that sparked public outcry in August for the inclusion of racist material.
The blog post, written by Wizards’ game design architect Christopher Perkins, states in no uncertain terms that the studio’s new review process “mandates that every word, illustration, and map must be reviewed by multiple outside cultural consultants prior to publication.” The so-called “inclusion-review process” will take place at multiple points during the development of a product — including during the final assembly, when art and text will be reviewed side by side.
A long-time Dungeons and Dragons player says the tabletop role-playing game’s latest sourcebook is a positive step toward acknowledging its history of racism. But he wants more done to address the ways the game has failed in the past.
Shawn Taylor — a founding author of The Nerds of Color pop culture website, a founding organizer of the Black Comix Arts Festival and a lecturer at San Francisco State University — has been playing D&D for well over 30 years.
Taylor was thrilled at the chance to play a game that at its core, only required some dice and a meaningful story to play. But he says he quickly grew dismayed when his fellow young adventurers began exhibiting “unconscious racism.”
“It’s like, you’re Black, so you have to play the duplicitous character,” he said. “Or, you’re Black so you have to play someone who comes from a villainous family. Or, no, you can’t be a wizard. You can be a warrior because you can be big and brawny, but you couldn’t be intelligent and sneaky,” he recalled.
Prior to the introduction of the latest D&D book on Tuesday, players were required to create characters that have pre-set strengths or weaknesses based on their species.
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