Childres said the collaboration almost immediately paid off. Mendez Hodes is strengthening the internal consistency of Frosthaven’s world while making sure any narrative decisions don’t stumble into co-opting an actual culture’s lived experience or other harmful stereotypes. Mendez Hodes has previously consulted on Monsterhearts and Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, and is currently working with Magpie Games on the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender RPG. These well-meaning realisations have already been partially addressed by the hiring of James Mendez Hodes as a cultural consultant in April. Not only to stop real-world harm for players who may react negatively to such depictions, but also to just make the world-building stronger and more carefully thought-out for all players to enjoy.” He also briefly mentions the characterisation of peoples like the Inox and Quatryls as dangerous stereotypes of real-world cultures. “By using the term ‘race’, I am not only reinforcing this outdated way of delineating people, but I'm also reinforcing the idea that these delineations are so extreme - that the difference between a black person and a white person is as great as the difference between a squishy human and a pile of rocks,” Childres said.Ĭhildres goes on to describe the practice of turning races - a concept he claims would be better understood as cultures - into monoliths with a handful of defining features or social tics isn’t just harmful reductionism, it’s lazy worldbuilding. Even Wizards of the Coast has publicly promised to overhaul Dungeons & Dragons’ system - a process it says could take several years. The wider game design world is currently grappling with race as a seemingly intractable mechanic in both RPGs and board games. He holds up the concept of race in Gloomhaven as an example. And while the intent may be to not harm, our biases have a tendency to cause harm anyway.” “Everything we do is stamped with our own biases and influences. “This is a big problem, however, because nothing is created in a vacuum,” he wrote in the post. While creating the setting and peoples of Gloomhaven, Childres said he never considered his choices might hurt anyone because they were a fabrication - a fantasy story full of fantasy races. Namely, how a lack of choice and bog-standard fantasy tropes unintentionally left players in the cold. It has large shoes - and boxes - to fill as a successor to one of the most popular board games of the last decade, but designer Isaac Childres took a moment on May 14th to focus that anticipation on an important issue.Ĭhildres posted a public update to Frosthaven’s Kickstarter page, titled “Getting the narrative right”, that explained the team’s recent efforts to tackle the inherent problems with Frosthaven’s - and by extension Gloomhaven’s - storytelling and worldbuilding. The sequel to 2018’s Gloomhaven became the biggest crowdfunded game on Kickstarter and the third-largest project overall when fans pooled nearly $13 million for its development last spring. Frosthaven promises to be a massive game.
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