Academic (?) Resource
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| Image from the cover of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, |
I read an article by Chris Van Dyke entitled Race in Dungeons and Dragons which I found while doing my initial research and seemed to really nicely delve into the topic at hand.
He starts off by associating the standard human adventurer to a run-of-the-mill white male, with quotes from the Player's Handbook (which, when paired with the Dungeon Master's Guide, makes up the D&D bible), as well as mentioning that in ALL of the first 4 editions of the game there are only 2 non-white characters denoted in the core guides. This made me want to do a bit of my own research on my edition and see if any players are non-white, but since I don't have the 5th Edition PHB or DMG in front of me, I'll update this blog post later with that information.
Mr. Van Dyke continues on talking about classes who can play these classes. In the first couple editions of D&D humans could fulfill any role (rogue, sorceror, ranger, fighter, etc) and the other non-human, and therefore "non-white" races (elves, dwarves, gnomes, and non-copyright-infringing halflings) who were able to only fill niche roles and to, unfortunately, to a lesser degree than humans. Gnomes can be spellcasters, but not fighters; dwarves are great fighters, but not so good with magic; elves are good with bows and arrows; and so on and so forth. But remember, humans can do anything they can do better. In the first few editions the non-human races were capped at a lower class level, the common thought behind this is since they get boons to their stats, they should also have a hindrance.
He touches on half-orcs, one of the non-human but also non-white races, and how the half-orc culture is much like that of young black men in modern society. Usually they have only a single parent; their written language, of which they don't have their own but took from dwarves, looks much like graffiti; and they also have a tendency to be regarded with wariness or outright disgust.
Weirdly, the author stresses that he is pressed for time, and can not touch on the other playable, non-human, non-white race, Drow. Drow are much like elves, holier-than-thou attitudes, skilled in ranged weapons and dexterity, but their skin is a deep deep purplish black and they are, canonically evil.
I don't have an outro sentence for this one, so yeah, I'll see you soon with another post to my blag.
Yes, I called it a blag...
The most interesting part your research is the amount of detail you have in the process. The reader can feel all your emotions as you were researching. IT makes the reader want to read more about your topic and even do their own research. The Quality of the sources is great because they are all trust worthy. The sources are reliable because they come from trustworthy websites. An example of that is the Nexis Uni database because this site an provide you with many academic papers to make your research trustworthy. There isn't anything from my research that could help you, unless you want to talk about women in China. Are you satisfied with the research you have? Do you think your topic is too narrow? I think the only gap in your research is the fact that their isn't many sources related to your topic.
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