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Orc Wars: Dungeons and Dragons Players Split Over 'Species'
The Guardian
|January 02, 2025
My first dungeon master was an anti-racist skinhead," Jeremy Cobb says of his introduction to the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.
For Cobb, a 32-year-old actor, one of the joys of D&D is that it unites nonconformists - "the nerds who didn't want to play sports", as he puts it.
Despite that, efforts to draw back from stereotypes and give the orcs, elves and dwarves who populate its fantasy world a little more individuality have provoked a rightwing backlash.
"For me, from the creative side, the game is doing better than ever," said Cobb, who started playing in 2018 and is now a professional dungeon master (referee/narrator).
"But from the business side, fan relationship side and culture war side? No, not really."
The latest controversy involves the new rulebook for the game, in which "races" of characters have been renamed "species" and they no longer have specific attributes.
This story is from the January 02, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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