Cauldron

An Analysis of the Literature Surrounding the Intersection of Role-Playing Games, Race, and Identity

This literature analysis examines how race and identity intersect with role-playing games, focusing principally on fantasy titles such as Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft.

• Developer choices in character design, artwork, and game mechanics carry substantial rhetorical weight, shaping how players perceive race and which identities they can inhabit, with these patterns traced back to colonial and Orientalist traditions in fantasy literature.
• Dietrich's 2013 analysis found that none of the roughly ten million World of Warcraft players active in 2012 could create a non-white character.
• Long's 2016 study of Dungeons & Dragons artwork found that first-edition illustrations effectively excluded racial minorities.