i feel like people trying to make dnd more diverse (wrt to race, queerness, ability, etc.) would really benefit from internalizing that WOTC, and tbh all corporations, are designed to extract a profit from you, and that every ounce of good they could do comes second to that

i think a lot about the fact that daniel kwan "got to" host a show sponsored by wizards where he calls oriental adventures racist and then wizards just...quietly kept selling the damn thing, because they knew people who didn't care about the racism would buy it

the fact remains that as long as WOTC can get away with it financially they will continue to mishandle race, mishandle queerness, mishandle ability, because not enough people care to really threaten their margins. they can still turn a profit this way!

follow-on: a lot of people are going to see this and think "well, i should pirate the game instead!" and i REALLY really really want to encourage you to try indie RPGs instead. if you're pirating dnd materials, you're still playing the game and worse yet still marketing it

if you pirate and play dnd, then all the stories you use to convince your friends to get into RPGs will be dnd stories, and they'll spread dnd stories, and SOMEONE will still buy the damn thing. if you tell and gush about and spread indie games, your friends buy those instead

also asterisk: i don't pay close attention to dnd so idk exactly what happened with daniel kwan's thing, and i don't really care about the details. the point is that under capitalism the only way to get wizards to change is to threaten them with financial AND marketing starvation

see also: mike mearls' handling of the zak s situation, the treatment of orion black at the company, DMsguilds' history with taking down queer content, and plenty of other shit. there's a long history here and a lot of it sucks lmao

wizards has never had much incentive to be less racist, and it's generally best to assume that "it would be the right thing to do" will NEVER compel a corporation to, well, do the right thing. threaten them with loss of profit, though, and their tune will start to change

anyway that's my dndiscourse for tonight and honestly given how that sphere of twitter is probably for the next six months too lmao. ACAB but about corporations too