A Comprehensive History of Woke D&D – Appendix C: Woke Professionals
To get a fair view of what the woke D&D phenomenon actually is, it is appropriate to examine the worldview, ideology or theoretical outlook of the consultants being hired after the statement made on June 1, 2020, and after the death of George Floyd, who were meant to remedy the many supposed insensitivities in the company’s products. As the stated method was to establish “inclusivity reviews” where products were to be reviewed by “multiple outside consultants” I initially tried to find some organ of the company called something like “the review board”, but to no avail. What the “inclusivity reviews” were to become seems to have been the many cultural and sensitivity (1) consultants credited in WotC’s post-2020 products and who were hired with the explicit purpose of utilizing their professional woke skillset1 in the development of the products. It is therefore appropriate to examine these specific credited individuals. Furthermore, although not explicitly stated to be a remedy to racial or other insensitivities, some (2) writers who are not cultural/sensitivity consultants, in these products are clearly also of the more woke variety and the hiring of these particular individuals, it would be reasonable to believe, was probably motivated at least partly by the same impulses as the one’s leading up to the establishment of the “inclusivity reviews”. Therefore some writers could be considered as woke hires2 even though it can not be proven that they were hired for the exclusive purpose of cultural or sensitivity consultation. I will try and limit the examination of these people to the ones who themselves market their professional woke skillset or have an obvious career in selling wokeness. Lastly, certain individuals of the company who are not consultants or writers but (3) managers3 are in charge of leading the inclusivity and sensitivity work and will be worth taking a look at, especially when no consultants are credited in the products.
I will now break down the post-June 1 2020 products with regards to the inclusivity review process.
Out of the 26 D&D releases after the June 1 2020 announcement,4 I have been unable to find any connection to woke ideology in 6 of them. These releases are:
Mythic Odysseys of Theros (June 2, 2020)
Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden (September 15, 2020)
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons (October 26, 2021)
Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (July 13, 2022)
Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen (December 6, 2022)
Tyranny of Dragons Rerelease (January 17, 2023)
Mythic Odysseys and Icewind Dale were released so soon after the June 1 announcement that they most probably weren’t produced under the new inclusivity review regime.5 Fizban's Treasury of Dragons is a setting-neutral source book with statistics for different types of dragons and doesn’t have many narrative elements that could be either woke or non-woke. Tyranny of Dragons is a rerelease of an adventure path released back in 2014, well before the June 1 announcement. None of these releases can because of the details just described be fairly included in the “data set” of the current study. The Dragonlance and Stormwreck Isle releases however, I admit, have no obvious woke connection to them. Why, I can not say. This leaves us with 20 woke releases out of the 22 that fairly should be taken into consideration in this context. Out of these 20, 13 have credited (1) cultural and sensitivity consultants or simply “consultants”. The remaining 7 releases which have no credited consultants are:
Curse of Strahd: Revampd (October 20, 2020)
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (November 17, 2020)
Candlekeep Mysteries (March 16, 2021)
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (May 18, 2021)
Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos (December 7, 2021)
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse (May 16, 2022)
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (August 16, 2022, rerelease: September, 2022)
Light of Xaryxis (August 16, 2022) was an adventure in the original release of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space but was released as a stand-alone adventure in august 2022.
The Spelljammer release was clearly the object of an inclusivity review, considering the revisions after the “Hadozee controversy” and Curse of Stahd was “revampd” with the explicit purpose of addressing the “people known as the Vistani that “echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world.”” and “[WotC] said two future books will be written with a Romani consultant so as to characterize the Vistani “in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes””. Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse was under the scrutiny of the inclusivity review with the stated goal of removing supposed race essentialism, as made clear by principal rules designer Jeremy Crawford, as was Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. The latter product also has several (2) woke writers who should be considered woke professionals and are credited as cultural/sensitivity consultants in the list of products with such credits below.6
Strixhaven may not have any credited consultants but its lead designer Amanda Hamon describes herself as “championing marginalized professionals as they break into creative industries”. She could of course herself be suspected (I don’t know much about her formal or informal professional skills) to be a member of the above described woke professional class, especially with the use of the word “marginalized” as a clear ideological signifier (she also has the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in her twitter bio), but more importantly she clearly sees her role as lead designer to recruit these kinds of woke professionals. Hamon is a pretty much perfect stand-in for the consultants in Strixhaven’s case. This leaves Candlekeep Mysteries. Narrative Designer Ari Levitch, Creative Writer Adam Lee, and Senior Story Designer Chris Perkins can not be considered woke professionals in the sense that they market their professional woke skillset or have an obvious career in selling wokeness. Levitchs’ and Lees’ digital footprint in regards to wokeness leaves no obvious trail and while Perkins has been walking in lockstep with the inclusivity review regime and general wokeness trend for some time now (he was after all the author of the “Leveling Up Our Creative Process: Learnings From Spelljammer” post which launched the formalized inclusivity review regime), it was clearly not what got him hired by WotC way back in 1997. Nevertheless, Candlekeep is the home of professional “consultant” and “disability advocate” Jennifer Kretchmers’ infamous wheelchair accessible dungeon, a dungeon and adventure which was explicitly marketed on woke grounds, as described in the introduction of this article. It is also the home of contributions by writers such as Graeme Barber who describes himself as “a lapsed academic” known for texts criticizing “colonial perspectives” in D&D products (and to a lesser degree known for his NATO deployments to Bosnia and Afghanistan, a true anti-colonial effort!), so much so that he distanced himself from his own contribution to Candlekeep due to “Colonialist language and imagery around the Grippli[, a race of frog people,] was inserted [in the final product] as well, moving them from being simple and utilitarian with obvious culture and technology to being ‘primitives’ who ‘primitively decorate’ their thatched huts with crab bits.” We also have Daniel Kwan, famous for so effectively criticizing the AD&D 1E Oriental Adventures book still being sold online, even though it was supposedly an orientalist (a negative term in the post-colonial sense) book, that it resulted in WotC adding disclaimers to all of their old PDF products and Kwan earning an award. I could go on, but I think this is enough to prove that even when the explicit wokeness is not obvious at a quick glance, looking for it in writers and designers is like trying to hit the broadside of a barn.
It is also interesting to note here that shortly after the release of Tasha’s Cauldron and before the release of Mordenkainen Presents, Jontelle Leyson-Smith was hired as the companies first ever Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in December 2020, according to her LinkedIn (while it was officially announced on February 2, 2021). With this position filled, we can perhaps assume the inclusivity review regime to be ever present, even in addition to or in the absence of credited cultural or sensitivity consultants or other details revealing an inclusivity review having been implemented. Leyson-Smith quit her position in January 2024, but as Sameer Joseph (also a credited cultural/sensitivity consultant who we will be returning to below) was hired as “Associate Project Manager DE&I, Philanthropy, and Employee Experience” in July 2023 and still holds this position which entails being a product reviewer in relation to DEI, maintaining and enforcing the inclusion review process and being an “employee resource group advocate” (whatever that last one means) it is clear these (3) woke managerial roles exist and rule over the inclusivity review regime as a whole. These two are people appearing in news, company statements and who have open LinkedIn profiles and there might be more people like them at the company. For Spelljammer, Curse of Strahd and Mordenkainen we can’t pin it down on any one specific consultant but we can rely on the general spirit of the review process, as described by Teos Abadía above, on the profile of writers and designers like Crawford and on the presence of woke commissars like Leyson-Smith and Joseph.
So what are the particular characteristics of these peoples' wokeness? Let’s have a look at the overtly woke (woke in the specific, standpoint theoretical sense, not generally “progressive” political attitudes)7 consultants of the 13 products with credited cultural and sensitivity consultants out of the 20 products I argued above should fairly be considered woke products.
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When it comes to the core rulebooks re-released after june 2020 (the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeonmaster’s Guide and the Monster Manual), it gets a bit more complicated. Out of all the products mentioned in the table above, there are only 5 consultants within them whom I have had to exclude from the table for not having any woke connections (you can see which these ones are in footnote 4). The consultancy credits of the core books seem to follow a different logic, however, as professionals such as UX designers and artists are listed among them. As many of the above mentioned woke professionals are listed as consultants in the core books as well, I’m sure many of the other ones are woke as well (for example, the esteemed originator of the “orcs are afro-americans” take mentioned in the introduction to this article, James Mendez Hodes (who by the way even though he cites Fanon’s seminal post-colonial work repeatedly throughout his article and is deep in postcolonial jargon claims he has no academic training in critical theory (think standpoint epistemology) in a comment to this article), is credited as a consultant in both the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide). There are however 48 of them and even though I’ve already researched 22 consultants (only 17 of which are woke) for the non-core releases from after June 2020, I feel that 48 is a bit much even for me.
For the sake of “brevity”, let us instead remind ourselves of Teos Abadías detailing of the sensitivity and inclusivity changes from what core rulebooks for 5th edition D&D were like when they were released in 2014 to how they appeared to him in november 2023 in the mobile app for the game. Just like the theoretical outlook of the 17 woke consultants, the changes were in part generically woke, but decisively postcolonial in character, like the theoretical outlook of 8 of the woke consultants.
Or who “offer professional intermediation in the companies previously independent social and economic processes” to keep with the more specific definition offered above.
That is, not diversity hires, but hires meant to enforce woke ideology, which they are capable to do due to their specific professional skill set.
It might here be appropriate to reiterate some class definitions. The professional class is defined by their training and education, typically business qualifications and university degrees, with occupations thought to offer influence on society that would otherwise be available only to capital owners. The professional skill set of the professional might be of technical-practical use or wholly ideological but the proof is in the pudding whether these skills actually allow them influence over the public or private sector without being actual owners of capital but employed as wage earners. Managers are defined by their delegated powers from the owner of an organization and are employed by that organization without being owners. What separates managers from, say, foremen is that a manager may fire and hire and has influence over the strategic decisions of the organization. Most managers are also professionals (making them the “professional-managerial class (PMC)) but most professionals are not managers. The writers and consultants here mentioned should be considered as two occupational groups of the same professional class, while the managers (in their individual occupations some times referred to as “directors” etc. but with no practical distinction from being just another manager) are of course of the managerial class.
Excluding Digital and print-on-demand releases (of which there are three).
Mythic Odysseys does actually have a cultural consultant but this seems to be in regards to actual ancient greek mythology more than anything else.
Polygon writes: ““We really wanted to reinforce that all of the game’s races are just as flexible as humans when it comes to the range of culture and personality,” Crawford said. The maneuver is an attempt to take the racist elements that D&D has been carrying around inside of it for the better part of four decades and yeet them directly into the sun.”
That is, excluding the ones from these products not marketing themselves as cultural or sensitivity consultant but as consultants in game design in a more technical sense. These are: Adam Lee (Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft), Tim Stone (Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft) Ivan Wong (Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft), Patrick Rothfuss (The Wild Beyond the Witchlight), Michele Carter (Turn of Fortune’s Wheel).
Upholds Edward Said’s Orientalism as theoretic lens for analyzing fantasy depictions of the middle east. Concept of Orientalism recurring in his RPG work. Studied Psychology and Arabic, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies at Santa Clara University, probably where he was trained in Fanonian (psychology) and Saidian (Middle Eastern Studies) postcolonial theory.
Feels the need to describe herself as a feminine writer with “fluid sexuality and social justice enthusiasms”.
Holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing for Children and a Master of Arts degree in Children’s Literature from Simmons College. She has a very unusual name so one can only assume she is behind this review of a book on Arabian Nights. “Orientalism, intersect, subjects and subalterns” and an appreciation for critique of orientalist narratives, it’s all there.
From her website: “She wrote the blog Silver Goggles, an exploration of postcolonial theory through steampunk.”
From a brochure from the Interdisciplinary Studies department of the City College of San Francisco: “The certificate examines the intersectionality of sexism, classism, racism, anti-Semitism/antiArabism, heterosexism, ableism, transphobia, and adultism/ageism (age-based oppression)”
Bit of a curveball, I’ll admit. Holds a master’s degree on the subject, has written some published academic work.
In her video series “Gaming as Other”, she states that she is: “Very interested in the topics of race and gender in gaming”. She then goes on to make an argument non-white real world races or fantasy races (supposedly) allegorical to real world races are oftentimes defined by being “the Other”, meaning they have no identity of their own besides being non-white. “The Other” as a philosophical concept goes way back, all the way to Hegel, but has been used in all kinds of disciplines and fields, perhaps most importantly for Beltrán in psychology. Applying the concept to the issues of race and racism was however an innovation of Frantz Fannon, a founder of post-colonial theory, in his “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952).
“The X-Card is a technique for moderating content while playing tabletop role-playing games, also known as a safety tool. Gameplay pauses when a player touches a card marked with an X, enabling the group to remove any uncomfortable material from the narrative and/or address players' mental and emotional wellbeing.”
Very hard to pin down. Overtly woke, but her website claims that her expertise comes from personal experience, coupled with advocacy training (weekly to every-other-week 2002-2015, with ongoing research and trainings since). Her LinkedIn reveals she worked as a “Prevention Specialist” for the “Center for Community Solutions” between 2002 and 2015. Visiting the Centers website, one can go the Prevention Education > Workshops > Professional Training > Crisis Intervention Training Flyer to get some idea of what her expertise, or professional skill set, consists of. “The Intersection of Power, Privilege & Oppression” is listed, along with:
Overview of Sexual Assault & Intimate Partner Violence
Neurobiology of Trauma
Trauma-Informed Care
Empowerment Model
Child Sexual Abuse
Teen Relationship Violence
Community Resiliency Model® Crisis Intervention
Motivational Interviewing
Risk Assessment and Safety Planning
The Role of Law Enforcement
Forensic Exams, Legal Options, & Victim’s Rights
Sex Trafficking & CSEC
Corazóns LinkedIn (where he calls himself “Betancourt” for some reason, but it seems to be the same guy) mentions that he has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, more specifically in women’s, gender and sexualities studies. I haven’t been able to find any recommended or required reading but taking a look at the programes courses makes it clear that intersectionality and queer theory is the name of the game. Several lectures of the programe seems to have their roots in postcolonialism, however, and it’s likely that Corazón is trained in the field.
East's only formal education seems to be film school with no obvious connection to any school of woke thought. However, reading articles and interviews with her, it comes across that she markets her viewpoint as a native american as an offered service and that she frames this as resistance to colonialism. Not a professional skill set in the the strict sense, but a worldview nonetheless.
Similar aesthetics and marketing of herself as that of Siena East. “Winona has always been motivated to create empowering representations of women and people from minority backgrounds - Indigenous and LGBTQ2SIA+ characters especially. Winona grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, is queer and Two-Spirit, and is a member of the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Ojibwe.”
Says in a podcast interview that Amanda Leduc and her book “Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space” as inspiration for her design process, at least directly so when working on The Withcer. In her book, Leduc doesn’t have a clear chapter on “theory” on anything but the jargon is there – “marginalized communities”, “IBPOC (Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour)”, “intersection” of this and that marginalized group and so on. Thompson is also clear in the interview that she got her ideas from her university studies but she’s not very clear on what exactly these studies entailed.
From the website of Saint Martin’s University: “His current area of interest focuses on the gamification of Indigenous philosophies in board and card game design, challenges both Ameritrash and Euro Games which often perpetuate, foster, and idolize colonial policies, methods, and projects.” I have not been able to find an article where he firmly grounds himself in any cohesive social theory but the jargon is very postcolonial, especially in this essay which he links on his RPG blog.
Ramadan-Santiago is a postdoctoral fellow of Stanford University and his dissertation “Dios en carne: Rastafari and the Embodiment of Spiritual Blackness in Puerto Rico” is in the postcolonial tradition, among other things making explicit reference to Frantz Fanon.
Teaches classes on “Writing the Other” alongside Nisi Shawl, co-author of the foundational book on the subject. Nisi Shawl’s stories have been featured in the anthology “So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy”. The foundational book, “Writing the Other”, also has a clear connection to postcolonialism through jargon (for example, see footnote on Whitney “Strix” Beltrán for this connection regarding the term “the Other”).
Markets herself as someone who “can offer my perspective, as a queer, black, mentally ill, nonbinary person” as a sensitivity reader.
As made clear in this interview
Gave an interview a few years ago where she said that: “I’m currently a full-time student, and I’m fresh off of writing a thesis on speculative fiction (...) speculative fiction shows us things that we recognize from our daily lives, but incorporates some element of defamiliarization (...) In my thesis, this comes up in the context of gender.”
From his LinkedIn, it’s clear that Sameer Joseph has no university credentialed woke skill sets. Joseph is however, most importantly, associate project manager of DEI for WotC since July 2023 and has been overseeing the work of “decolonizing” the game, as Teos Abadía put it in his November 2023 article.