The upcoming DnD history book, ‘The Making of Original Dungeons and Dragons’, was created with the help of inclusivity consultants, Wizards of the Coast confirms. In a press event from May 15, senior game designer Jason Tondro says these consultants helped identify “language we would not use today in gaming”.
The Making of Original Dungeons and Dragons is an enormous non-fiction book that documents D&D’s early history. Historian Jon Peterson has helped Wizards of the Coast put together the beginnings of D&D, showing the game’s early influences, sales, and community. Senior designer Jason Tondro says the book also contains “every page, cover to cover” of the first-ever draft of D&D.
During the press event, Wizards of the Coast was asked how this new DnD book planned to tackle the more problematic side of RPG history. To this, Tondro says “we do address this stuff in the book directly”. One example Tondro shares is “a parenthetical comment that’s a dig at Women’s Lib”, a feminist political movement that pushed for equality for women. “We hired inclusivity consultants because we wanted to know what we were in for, and we wanted to call it out”, Tondro explains.
Wizards of the Coast may have been vigilant for comments like this, but the tabletop RPG publisher has not attempted to erase D&D’s less-than-savory history. “We couldn’t change it, because it’s history”, Tondro says. “So we included this material while calling it out and placing it in a historical context.”
It’s not unusual for Wizards to call upon inclusivity consultants. In fact, since 2022, “every word” of in-development D&D books has been reviewed by a cultural consultant. Cultural consultants were known to work on Dungeons and Dragons products even before this (though, in some cases, they didn’t get credit).
Launching on June 18, this historical text is the next title up on the DnD release schedule. For more recent releases, here’s our Vecna: Eve of Ruin review. Or, for something you can read all year round, here’s everything you need to know about DnD classes and DnD races.