There’s a saying, “To be African American is to be African without history and American without privilege.”

Me, being a male Black American, the cultural differences stand out more than the physical similarities. Because of my cultural disconnect to my African ancestry Doomfist just isn’t for me, for example (plus his play style sucks lol).

i really struggled with trying to define blackness—it’s a largely designation given to us, rather than one that comes from our own cultural experience. displacement from africa seems important, but it doesn’t account for every facet of the black experience, including immigrants to other countries from africa. not…

I found that shocking too - you have to think at one point in one meeting one of them looked up and thought, “well, shit I think we screwed up with this writer’s room”.

PoC isn’t really good enuff to dover yer complaint tho. An American PoC doesn’t have any more clue about African cultures than some white history professor might. You need African people, from an African viewpoint to actually get any authentic take on an African fantasy setting. As an illustrative parallel, Ask any…

Thanks for commenting. I too was enchanted by a lot of what I read in the adventure. Tons of things about Port Nyanzaru (and the lands beyond) are awesome. Dinosaur racing is dope. So are the guides’ backstories. I’ve detailed some of that in other articles. What I’m questioning here is why this very fraught campaign…

Yeah I started the article thinking “well, its better than not trying at all” but you convinced me... it is. This shit is sad. Hasbro get it together.

You’d be surprised how a novel a concept this is in the gaming industry.
Games Workshop’s products and fiction have a troubling history with non-white anything and this is the writing room for their flagship fiction campaign (Horus Heresy):

To be honest, I find this pretty surprising considering Wizards has done a bang up job representing other cultures with MTG lately. I haven’t been around for the Meso-Pirate world, but the Indian plane seemed very respectful and well thought out.

Given that we have great writers who just happen to not be white that WOTC could have tapped does indeed reek of laziness. Nnedi Okorafor and Saladin Ahmned come to mind. Steven Barnes too.

Yeah, you’d think step 1 would be hire a PoC to work in that content. It’s like when a bunch of straight dudes say they’re going to include LGBT characters in fantasy and you get a short haired, tough lesbian rogue and a flamboyant male mage. Good try and thanks for the effort, but...yeah.

I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but honestly, how frickin hard is it to hire a few folks of the group you’re wanting to reflect when developing new content like this?

Without a doubt in a situation like this that’s always the best start. When you want to incorporate PoC and inspiration from other cultures, having someone from said culture give feedback would always be the best course of action. It helps to keep things inclusive and welcoming - or a pleasant surprise in the case of…

A lot of your points and criticisms are - overwhelmingly valid. This is definitely a fantasy anchor rooted in the early Edgar Rice Burroughs, H Rider Haggard, and Jules Verne style which is - ready to be hauled up.

Honestly, those criticisms—particularly concerning the language choices (I didn’t realize that only three of the languages spoken on the African continent included clicks; I definitely learned something about both the area and my own preconceived notions today)—seem both fair and perfectly reasonable.

While I will…

Totally. It’s hard. It’s good they tried. But I was surprised when I was told that no people of color worked on the adventure directly. That would have been a good start.

I think the bigger problem is that the adventure seems to be set up so that the characters are mainlanders (ie. whites from fantasy Europe) only in Chult to kill monsters and plunder treasure. You’re essentially reenacting colonialism. There’s very little in the way of content for people who want to play local heroes…

Point taken.

Counterpoint: SAM HYDE IS A NAZI

He chose to associate himself with the wrong people. If you so much as take a phone call from Sam Hyde, you deserve whatever backlash comes your way.