D&D manager explains how racist content made it into a campaign book

In September, Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast apologized for including racist content in one of its campaigns. On Monday while an hour-long interview on the 3 Black Halflings Channel on YouTube, D&D Executive Producer Kyle Brink discussed the situation in detail – including actions his team will be taking going forward to ensure something like this never happens again.

Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is a reboot of a setting First published in 1989

for the second edition of D&D. In creating the three-volume product, Wizards chose to bring forward an even older type of character to fill their ranks. This species is the Hadozee, an ape creature first introduced in 1982. As originally written in the 1980s, the Hadozee were clearly a thinly veiled caricature of former black slaves. Wizards’ goal in including them was in all likelihood an attempt to redeem this intellectual property and introduce it to a new generation of gamers.

But the attempt backfired spectacularly. Shortly thereafter Spelljammer: Adventures in Space began circulating publicly, the Hadozee were called out for their association with fictional slavery, as well as problematic themes and imagery, all of which served to increase anti-Black racism. The episode prompted Wizards to issue a formal apology, revise the published content, and promise to use outside cultural consultants in the future.

In the Monday interview, Brink alluded to the fact that there were professional consequences for those involved.

“This was a mistake and was taken very seriously and some internal action was taken as a result,” Brink said.

But how did such a glaring error come about in the first place? In the interview, Brink gave the first real details about how the situation in the studio developed.

“There was one particular paragraph that really connected to previous performances that we really didn’t intend,” Brink said. “It was written by a senior person who is very trusted, and very few saw it before it got into the final draft. […] So there were two breakdowns in progress. Firstly, we didn’t check everything, and that’s why nobody had checked it. And it even got in there outside of the normal process.”

Looking ahead, Brink said the inclusion of objectionable content like this is “not something that can happen again.” That’s because “every word” has since been released for D&D Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is reviewed by multiple cultural advisors – professional sensibility readers – whose feedback is then integrated into the editing process prior to publication.

That kind of work, Brink said, will continue to be more important as the Wizards team scours its back catalog for new releases:

D&D has a long history. It has a long and deep lore that goes back to some pretty disturbing things. And so we’ve gotten to a point where we want to acknowledge and push some of the cool nostalgia forward, but also want to fix the broken stuff. Correct the things that were wrong with it. In this area, it’s very possible for someone well meaning to do a nostalgic callback who actually digs up a whole bunch of horrible things with that hook that we didn’t mean to have there in the first place. So while I can understand how the mistake was made, that doesn’t mean the mistake was forgiven, and it doesn’t mean the mistake wasn’t acted upon. So yes, we took it very seriously. And that can’t happen again with the current structure.

The trend toward using cultural advisors isn’t unique to Wizards of the Coast. Many publishers throughout the tabletop industry including Gloomhaven And Frosthaven Publisher Cephalofair Games, now use similar professional readers.

A revised version of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is digital via platforms such as D&D Beyond And roll20. errata can also be downloaded online for free.