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Steal Away Jordan by Julia EllingboeIndie+ recently ran a day of events that focused on taboos in gaming. One of the events was a live play of Steal Away Jordan: Stories from America’s Peculiar Institution by Julia B. Ellingboe. In this game, players play the roles of slaves in the US during the 1800s. Since I haven't read the actual game yet, this will be about my reactions to watching the game play. Hopefully the game itself will be available soon so I can read the text.

Humanizing the Dehumanized

I don't know how the evils of slavery was presented to any of you growing up, but I remember that my school textbooks treated enslaved human beings as property or things even as we were taught how evil this was. They were full of pictures of white humans looking into the mouths of black humans to see how healthy they were with this act compared to the inspection one would give a horse. We saw pictures of them bound and chained standing on the auction block, sold off as individuals. Stories and images of whippings, beatings, and the scars of the same showed up over and over again. Then came the pictures of those who fought slavery, generally the white and upper class people of America who righted this wrong.

While I think those are all important things to learn, notice we haven't learned much, if anything, about how the enslaved people lived. We rarely heard their voices. I couldn't tell you what games they played as children. How did their parents comfort them during a thunderstorm? After a hurricane?

Douglass and Brown Argue: Douglass argued against John Brown's plan to attack the arsenal at Harpers Ferry by Jacob Lawrence
In this game, we started with people. Each player described their character. How old he/she was. Whether or not they had attempted to run away before and, if so, what scars they had on their body that told that story. Were they literate? Did they have skills? Why were they there? Where were they born? What was their name? In the process, they created people and the possibilities of rich, detailed stories should not be glossed over.

After the creation of the people comes the assignment of worth and the slave name from the game master. If you watch, there's a interesting bit where one of the players gives a current name to his character. Julia steps in and says he doesn't get to choose that. It's the first time, in my opinion, that we start to see how these characters have two selves, their human side and then the part where they are another person's property. Whereas the earlier section reinforced the former, this drives home the latter. The game master decides what the details about your character are worth and assigns the players their dice based on it. Young adult typically is worth more than older adults, although being skilled mitigates that. Previous escape attempts as well as disobeying result in dice being taken away.

Community as a Resource

After the worth of each player character is assigned, Julia gives the worth of the NPCs, including the slave owner, Robert Ford. Robert has a lot of dice and Julia even suggests that the characters might want to combine forces if they want to have a conflict with him.

Understanding Motivations

I discuss issues of social justice a lot. One of the concepts I find hardest to talk about is why 1) people don't just rebel and 2) why some of the people in the oppressed group do things that reinforce the oppressive system. Between Julia's descriptions and the play in the game, I hope people get a better idea.

Because slavery is often taught as a means to an end, in this case understanding why relations in the US broke down to the point where we fought a destructive and costly Civil War, we often don't think of slaves as three-dimensional human beings. We don't think of them having a culture. We emphasize the property element to the point we don't understand that they might often travel within a limited sphere and have all sorts of relationships with all sorts of people. We also might not consider that, like all human beings, they have basic needs and wants and that one of the big differences between free and slave comes down to how you get those things. I'm going to simplify things for a moment. For me, as a free person in the US, my ability to meet my needs is largely self-driven. If I want more, I should either work more or find a job that pays me more money. I have the freedom of choice to attempt to do that (whether or not I'm successful is another matter).

If you are owned by another person, by and large your ability to meet those needs and desires is tied to the person who owns you. If he or she does well, there's a good chance you will benefit from that. If you sabotage that person, you may be harming yourself as well. The way I tend to view it is their status sets your base. Since material goods may be harder to come by and keep, as an enslaved person, your relationships with others are important whether they be the comfort of friends and family or the access to information and resources that others might provide. So, if you were to get caught attempting to escape or planning a slave revolt, you could easily lose most if not all of your resources through the punishment and the possible sale to someone else.

Re-examining the Hero Story

Emancipation: Credit Library of Congress / Thomas Nast

As I mentioned earlier, in my experience, the slave narrative is often not a tale of the slaves at all but of this epic battle between whites over the topic of the slaves. We champion Abraham Lincoln, knowing all sorts of details about his life, but rarely do people like Frederick Douglass get the same treatment. We have lists of those who died in the Civil War, but I have yet to see a book that lists the name of those who died attempting to escape slavery.

Detail from Freedom to the Slave: ca. 1863, lithograph - New York Public Library Digital Gallery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Instead of playing a white abolitionist or a slave owner who sees the light and frees his or her slaves, the players played slaves. They were attempting to free themselves, using their own wits. When we compare this to other games that attempt to explore these issues, such as say, Bioshock Infinite, this change of perspective is huge.

Summary

There's a bunch more that I could go into here, but I'd prefer to wait until I can read the game itself. While my knowledge of the specific subject matter the game covers may be limited, I saw a lot come out during the game play that made me excited, especially as someone who grew up in a lower class household and had to later deal with how people from the upper classes viewed people like me and our lives and choices. While the game is not currently available, I asked Julia about it and she hopes to have a PDF version available again soon. Also, I asked Indie+ if they would consider releasing it in audio only form for those who dig podcasts. It sounds like there's a possibility of that happening next week.

If you are interested in learning more, the Library of Congress has a collection of narratives from former slaves on their website.

(Also, notice how much of the art presented focuses on white people and their roles in the anti-slavery movement, often presenting them as the heroes. Understanding how common that presentation is is important to understanding some of the race issues that continue in the US.)

I like adding elements of environmentalism to my games. This came out in my article for Melora and in my Acadia game where one of the tensions I explicitly set up was between the ship builders and their need for a certain type of timber and the gnomes and other forest folk who made their homes in those trees. I recently heard about the underground forests in places like Niger and the work being done to make them rise again in an attempt to combat desertification.Apple Valley

Basically, in some deserts, there are stumps or seedlings of trees that, with care and cultivation, could turn into trees. If this is done, they not only provide their own goods, in the form of shade, firewood, etc, they also make the land around them more productive. We didn't know this because for years we destroyed them, allowed cattle to feed on them, and didn't prune them. Some farmers purposefully destroyed them believing that they would decrease yield. According to the article, in some areas crop yields increased 2 to 3 times after practicing these techniques.

Introducing in Game

There's a few ways one could introduce this in game.

• Have local groups fight over land where these procedures aren't being used. Allow nature-type checks to be used to find out a non-violent solution to the conflict.
• If the PCs leave the well-travelled roads, have one of the communities they meet practice this type of cultivation. If you are making a morally grey world, it easily could be one of the "monster" groups, similar to some groups of Horde in World of Warcraft. However be careful to not make this into a typical "savages" narrative that we find all too often in fantasy.
• Make finding such a solution the life's goal of an NPC and have him or her ask one or more PCs to aid in the development of these techniques.

Providing Information and Implementing

What information to provide and how to provide it depends on what type of game you are running. For instance, if the game is primarily about dungeon delving with very little social interaction, downtime, or character backstory, providing detailed information to your players about what needs to happen to produce one of these green zones isn't necessary and may be overkill. Providing a journal or tome that details this information that they can then redeem in town for rewards should work and, if the campaign goes on for some time in the game world, you can describe the changes that are occurring when the enter town after a trek.

If the characters are interested in being more directly involved, I'd suggest doing some research on the techniques and the outcomes. Then decide if the PCs should research and experiment themselves on what techniques work best or if they are going to be more involved in the implementation stage. It all depends on what you and your players find interesting. This would be a great use for in-game-world downtime and I'd suggest going for simplicity and success over simulation.

Also, remember that the challenges presented to the PCs don't have to be limited to finding information or providing physical labor. If you listen to Tony Rinado's story, you'll notice that he had to convince a lot of people, at many different levels of society, that this worked and was a good idea.

Describing The Changes

In the video, Tony Rinaudo discusses how the environment and the local culture changed due to these techniques. I'd suggest figuring out a time line for how this could change the local game world and play it out as either NPCs or PCs employ these techniques. Change the description as they venture outside of town. Have the NPCs thank the PCs for making it easier to get firewood or for the increased prosperity for town. Decrease the number of conflicts based on competition for resources. Add new people to the town, people who were enticed to come there based on the developments.

What ideas do you have? Feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Image: "Apple Valley" © 2012 Gwyneth Ravenscraft, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

BerrornarI got a few responses to my post on D&D Next races that I would like to discuss here.

First, a comment from Impressions on the D&D Next Races Section by Deran.

I agree, that women have been treated badly in the past (and by some these days). I don't think this type of mentality should be portrayed in games. I think there are fundamental differences between the genders and should equally be addressed in the documentation. Describing male Dwarves as generally a little huskier than females doesn't seem to me that female Dwarves are any less important. I would like to see more information on female Dwarves and why some wear beards and others choose not to.

There are a few problems with this argument. Applying human sexual differences to dwarves has no basis in the game reality. Dwarves neither evolved nor were created by an Abrahamic god. They were created by Moradin and, as far as I can tell, before 3.5 (and maybe 3rd, I don't have a 3rd edition players' handbook), they were near impossible to tell apart physically. In fact, even Moradin's wife has a beard, one that has its own mythology associated with it. The only real sex or gender difference I could find, from Roger E. Moore's "The Dwarven Point of View" in Dragon #58, was an explanation that for whatever reason, fewer females were born than males. My understanding is that dwarven culture in general viewed adventuring in a negative manner, so given the low numbers of women born each year, it makes sense that a female dwarf adventurer would be rare. In everything else, it seems that males and females have approximately the same opportunities. If a female dwarf wants to spend her life as a craftsmen, she is allowed that freedom. If a male dwarf gets married, it was expected that he turn his focus to his home life. So these beliefs in fundamental differences between sex/gender make no sense in the context of a dwarf.

However, that tidbit about there being fewer female births leads me into the next question.

When I read (skim, really) over the races section, it reads to me like the guidelines for art orders got included in the draft. I find it really easy to imagine someone deciding that that information (art guides) would be useful in the draft races chapter, which might be part of why I read it that way.

Independent of the specific choices for very specific things like female dwarven beards (which is an interesting topic, but you guys have it covered already), I wonder what you think about gender dimorphism in art orders? I know that you've spent some time and effort on the topic of gender representation in fantasy art, and I think we agree that the very blatant differences characteristic of, for example, WoW are disturbing. I'm not sure how I feel about simpler and subtler indicators like half-elven facial hair, or `slight' height/bulk differences for elves.

Part of my motivation is this: I have several trans friends, and social cues like facial hair, grooming, and muscle bulk are important to them. In your opinion, is this something that's worth preserving in fantasy games, or is the cart pulling the horse?

I wanted to post this as a comment, but couldn't find the comment link. Thanks!
~Chad

I'm not sure if they were the art orders, but if they are, that makes me rather sad. That would mean that these things could not be addressed before the books come out and would be part of the game without discussion from the community. However, after doing some research, it seems likely that it came from 3.5. I'm also curious if it's related to video games and the such where there seems to be some difficulty in making females in general anything but skinny and big-breasted.

I want to be upfront, I'm no expert in transgender topics or issues and my experience is that many of my readers are not either. So I'd first like to give my definitions for a few terms before we discuss them. These happen to be my understanding of the terms and, in general, they can be quite hard to define precisely, I think in part because they are intended to define things that are, in reality, quite ambiguous. (Please, contact me if I'm grossly misrepresenting the meanings.)

sex - In it's most basic form, the label (male or female) assigned at birth based on physiological characteristics.
intersex - People who fall outside the physiological norms making labeling them with a sex difficult or results in them being labeled with a sex they do not have.
gender - Societal expectations and norms surrounding people of a particular sex and how we perceive ourselves. Gender is often referred to as a societal construct.
cisgender - People whose physiological expression matches their gender.
transgender - Peoples whose physiological expression does not match their gender.

I'm leaving out sexuality/sexual preference for now because it really deserves a post of its own.

I think the first thing we should discuss is that while we might label people as being cis or trans, that doesn't mean that all members of that group feel the same way about something. We cover up a lot of diversity in doing so, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for neutral, and some for bad. So, while these sorts of cues are important for some, they might not be for others, regardless of their gender.

However, we know that for some people being able to express gender in a story or game can be very important. When people complain about having too many strong women characters being nothing more but men with a different facade, what they often mean is that it feels like the gender of the person is completely irrelevant, we call that character a woman but nothing about what it means to be a woman in her society seems to affect her decisions or reactions. Generally they don't mean that no women can be portrayed in that way, but the lack of diversity in portrayals gets to them.

This lack of diversity in the D&D Next races is what bothers me. If three out of the four races present as males are larger than females, we lack a bit of diversity in our stories. That sex characteristic doesn't add much, if anything to the game. How is my gender as a dwarf different from gender in elves or in humans?

Additionally, in the case of the dwarf race, I find it detrimental to dwarf cis women. The aspects of society that are discussed in the description focus on mining and battle, two areas that regardless of historical accuracy, many people in the audience align with strength. People also tend to align smaller size with less strength. Thus, you take the one race that is supposed to be all about strength and create a sexual dimorphism that can easily imply a difference in prestige along gender lines, something that, as mentioned above, was lacking in some earlier editions of the game. Additionally, while I can imagine a world where magic users provide permanent body alternations, altering one's size and shape doesn't seem to be as interesting as figuring out the issues of how one fits into society or changes society to fit oneself.

Thus, while I agree that for a portion of the players, gender differences and representations of sexual dimorphism will be important tools in helping them play the character they want, I think we should be careful in what those differences can imply within the setting's society and have a preference towards including them when they increase our story options rather than repeating our own biases in the setting without thought.

To me, that's one of the most interesting things about having fewer dwarf females born each year. Dwarfs are a society built on tradition and clans. For males, family is both important (clan-based) and many of them will not have one (not enough females). For females, while one can choose to become a craftsmen or an adventurer, there has to be a lot of pressure to reproduce. For everyone, are clans patrilineal, matrilineal, or maybe not even based on genealogy but interest? Are daughters celebrated more than sons due to their rarity? Do some societies decide to go with a polyandry system instead of monogamy? Do some cis men marry non-dwarves instead? How do their families react?

In this case, the sex-based change in society provides a character with a wide range of decisions based on sex and gender. Instead of limiting character development, for players who want to, it expands it.

I'd argue that the size difference in elves, while breaking with traditional representations of elves in some ways, isn't as important as with the dwarves. Elves aren't particularly known for their strength and size doesn't have the same implications in regards to the things they are known for, such as their bonds with nature or affinity towards magic.

Note: A good starting point for understanding transgender is Transgender 101: 15 Things to Know

One of the common reactions to my discussion of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was, "Oh come on, that was written so long ago. Why are we talking about it?"

The reason why I discuss it is because if you immerse yourself in D&D material from that time period long enough, you start bringing the points of view into the current project. I already pointed it out a bit with the races, but it's even clearer in the deities section in the classes.

Sedille: "Sedille" © 2012 Jenna Fowler, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Here are the deities: Arcanist, Lifegiver, Lightbringer, Protector, Reaper, Stormcaller, Trickster, and Warbringer.

Now, I happen to like the creation of archetypes instead of specific deities. This is important because D&D Next is meant to unite editions. By using archetypes, they can provide mechanics for the different deities that work in Greyhawk and in Forgotten Realms. It's weighted a bit towards martial, but that makes sense given D&D Next development until this time, it's largely been dungeon crawls.

However, I do have issues with the descriptions of three of them. Lifegiver, Protector, and Stormcaller. Suddenly, out of nowhere, these deities and the concepts and traditions they represent become gendered. The Lifegiver deity, the one involved with growth, healing, and fertility, is "usually female." The Protector, the domain of defensive strength. As a martial deity, it's usually male, but as the community building, caregiving version, it's usually female. Finally, Stormcaller, which represents storms, wars, physical might, and courage is commonly barbaric and male.

At this point, some will argue that this is traditional, we shouldn't get upset at this. Yes, in patriarchal societies, this was typical but far from universal. But, those are patriarchal societies, something that should not be assumed for all games of D&D. What happened to not setting the thermostat?

Additionally, some may point out that well, we're talking about the deities themselves, not the player characters. The problem with this is that it still implies that there are gender-based distinctions within the setting itself. That men are war-like, courageous, and barbaric. Women are the lifegivers, community builders, and caregivers. Add on top of this the sexual dimorphism, and we're right back in the 1970s. Sure, there are strong female characters in the setting but they are rare and exceptional.

My suggestion, leave out the "usually male" and "commonly female." It doesn't add anything while still setting the thermostat as it were. For those of us who don't want that in our games, it's one less thing we have to explicitly fight against. Our players won't be reinforced into believing that genders are a particular way in our game. People who want this gender bias in their games will bring it to the game on their own. They are still fully supported, especially since the settings mentioned have this bias in them.

Please, don't explicitly put gender stereotypes into your setting, Wizards of the Coast.