So I know this is old news to y’all, but this is my first time seeing this particular thread, and reading it took me on a roller coaster from, “Huh, that’s neat,” to “wait, there was diversity before this,” to “wait, not that much before this.” Rather than respond from instinct or unreliable memory though, I decided to actually look into it, and here’s what I got.
(Conclusion at the end if you don’t want to read a wall of text.)
First off, I thought it best to go all the way back to the beginning, so I dusted off the old Chainmail pamphlet (the precursor to D&D) and immediately realized how silly that was, because Chainmail is a war game and you don’t spend time making individual characters, so the concept of individuality itself isn’t even addressed. It’s true that the book does use masculine pronouns, but in its defense it predates the concept of the singular they, so it’s annoying but not anywhere close to patriarchal oppression.
I moved on directly to OD&D (original Dungeons & Dragons) and found that the words “sex” and “gender” don’t appear anywhere in the books, nor does the discussion of skin color, and “race” is only referenced when discussing humans verses elves and orcs or whatever. “Man” is used liberally to mean “human,” which was actually normal for the time this was all written anyhow, so while it is subtly patriarchal I don’t think it’s fair to condemn, since it’s more a sign of how language changes than anything. In any case, “male” and “female” appear in the dungeon master’s books, but only when discussing the biology and ecology of dragons, werewolves, and other non-humanoid creatures. Off to a pretty good start; if you aren’t going to be inclusive, at least don’t be divisive, right? However, if you look at illustrations, it’s less good. There are no apparent people of color (granted, the artwork is all line drawing, so all I can really say is that there are no “shaded skin tone” people) and there are only three women I could locate, two of which were antagonists, and one of those two was wearing nothing but a bandoleer and a loin cloth, and she was labeled as an Amazon. So... not optimal?
I moved onto Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) and was expecting much of the same I found in OD&D... and I was wrong. This book explicitly calls itself out on using masculine pronouns, and clarifies that this is just how they wrote it, and you can feel free to use whichever sex/gender you like. From page 7 of the Player’s Handbook, “Although the masculine form of appellation is typically used when listing the level titles of the various types of characters, these names can easily be changed to the feminine if desired. This is fantasy - what's in a name? In all but a few cases sex makes no difference to ability!” And before anyone gets pedantic about the “all but a few cases” line, just stop. There are differences between the sexes in a general sense, and acknowledging this does not make one sexist, so long as no value judgement is applied to the difference. Furthermore, a personal note from E. Gary Gygax himself in the book states, “You will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma...” But... in fairness... if you look further on in the book, you’ll find that female characters of all races (except half-orcs, woot woot represent) are actually limited to a lower maximum strength score than their male counterparts. Kinda seems as if they were trying to be unbiased, but they were just so locked in by socialization that they fucked it up anyhow. The topic of race in AD&D is still not awesome, but it’s better. The books (at least the ones I have) are still line drawings, and while I didn’t see any shaded skin, I did see several characters dressed in the traditional garb of non-white ethnic cultures. This is another step in the right direction, because even though none of the characters in this or previous books had “darkened” skin, it is showing that any culture can be represented. Progress over OD&D, but baby steps.
Next onto AD&D 2nd Edition, the first version of Dungeons & Dragons that I actually played. Right away you can see that they are learning and fixing shit from previous editions, with the explicit statement in the statistic section, “Your character's sex has no effect on these minimums or maximums.” Hell, frickin’, yeah. Additionally it specifically calls out, “The sex and name of your character are up to you. Your character can be of the same sex as yourself or of the opposite sex.” (Aside: I was kicked out of an online Vampire: The Masquerade game, in the year 2016, for playing a character that was not the same sex as me. How does it feel to be less progressive than a white guy from Wisconsin in the 80s? Ahem.) The revised PHB (Player’s Handbook) even specifically states that they are not trying to exclude female players, so chalk this one up to a win for the time being. In terms of race, the text of the book is making strides as well; it clarifies the difference between D&D races and what we call race in the real world, it provides various sub-race examples, and explicitly states that humans “come in all the varieties we know on Earth.” As far as the art goes, there’s definitely more female depictions, and generally they aren’t being overly sexualized (one definite exception - bikini-clad sorceress), but... it’s still pretty white, dude. Like, there’s a lot more color artwork in here, and I didn’t see any people of color, with maybe the exception of one halfling, but that could have just been shading and not skin tone. By and large I’m just seeing a whole bunch of European guys, so graphically this seems like a step backward.
Now 3rd Edition and 3.5 (3e, 3.0, 3.5, 3.x) are where I spent a lot of time. This was the first edition that came out while I was already familiar with D&D, so I got to be there from the outset and build worlds. Also, this was the first edition produced by Wizards of the Coast; before this point is was TSR, so if Wizards is to thank for any change, this is where to look for it. And I gotta tell you, there’s a lot of good here. They go out of their way to depict male and female members of every species right in the first chapter, they give the female example characters practical armor instead of boob-mail, they make the template paladin - the archetypical male character class - a woman, and as someone mentioned above, the monk is a black woman. Fuck, man, this is some good shit. Now, this is the first edition to actually use the term “gender,” and admittedly they kinda messed up, but I’m inclined to jot this down as an honest mistake and not malevolence. The section on character gender is exactly one sentence long: “Your character can be either male or female.” So, it’s technically reinforcing the gender binary, but in fairness this was almost 20 years ago and not many people even knew that there was an option not to be binary. The point is, they don’t give a shit what gender your character is, because it is mechanically unimportant. Be who you want to be. The section on race clearly specifies a range of skin tones for each kind of humanoid, and as you thumb through the book you will see several people of color. Not as many as I’d like to see, but they’re definitely there! Throughout the 3.x generation you can see a steady uptick in racial and gender diversity, which was absolutely a welcome change. Incidentally, it was also during this era that the Dungeons & Dragons movie came out - do not attempt to watch it, it is cursed and you will surely perish - which featured a diverse cast, including a black elf.
4th Edition (4e) build right on top of the good work that 3.x had started. In the section on races we see male-presenting and female-presenting examples of each, the female halfling is definitely black, the female human appears Asian of some stripe, and if you look into the second and third players handbooks you will find elves of color, dwarves of color, and in the monster manual you can discover entire playable races that have abandoned the concept of gender identity. While it still isn’t explicitly inviting non-binary people to the table, and the racial spectrum still leans toward the paler side, things are moving in the right direction. Most notable to me is the fact that it’s getting harder and harder to say whether people of color are represented or not, because there are fewer and fewer “people” as I recognize them. Aasimar, Dragonborn, Deva, Shardmind, Warforged... I can’t rightly say if any of these are “people of color,” because half of them are colors that “people” don’t naturally come in. And honestly, I see this as a good thing, but I can see that some folks might not. If your choices are 45% white, 5% traditional people of color, and 50% alien, it can feel even more like you’re being pushed aside, or worse, that you’re supposed to identify with the aliens. And that’s not cool.
Finally, fifth edition (5e) which, as previously shown, has diversity in spades. The game finally acknowledges that sex and gender are not binary, and gives you the option to be whatever you want with the assurance that it’s really only important to the game if you want it to be. Moreover, we finally see true, real diversity in the racial representation of characters. No doubt you might think, “But wait, remember the black female monk!” Yeah, I remember, but if “diversity” to you means “one minority in a sea of white people,” then you are part of the fucking problem. When I look through the 5e books, this is the first time I feel like I’m seeing a truly representative array of ethnic identities and not just one or two token minorities to give privileged white people an excuse to claim inclusivity.
Conclusion:
5th Edition isn’t a lightning bolt of diversity striking a historically cishet white male world, but it also isn’t just the next in a line of inclusive iterations of the same old game. The original D&D book was white as hell and literally punished players for choosing a non-male character, and every edition since then has taken steps to get better and better. It’s completely understandable that someone might see 5e as the first edition of D&D to actually validate their race and gender identity; that doesn’t mean that it is true, but it does mean that it feels that way to some people, and those feelings are legitimate even if they aren’t accurate. Moreover, I’m seeing a lot of folks basically saying that D&D has always been inclusive, and I’ve got a feeling that those folks are forgetting the most important rule of D&D: The game is what you make it. If you believe that D&D has always been an inclusive environment, then that means that your D&D has been that way, and that’s something to be proud of. You have always welcomed every type of individual to your table, even though the books didn’t explicitly say you had to, and in fact sometimes used to say the opposite. And, thanks to the inclusive attitudes of so many players and DMs, the books have shifted steadily in that direction. Yes, your D&D has always been welcoming and accepting, and thanks to the attitudes of you and those like you, it is now overtly inviting people that were never quite sure if they would find a safe environment or not. Good job.
