Ubiquitous
2018-05-20 09:31:17 UTC
: Postscript is Cameron Kunzelman's weekly column about endings,
: apocalypses, deaths, bosses, and all sorts of other finalities.
The mind flayer might be the creature of Dungeons & Dragons. Theyre
purple humanoids with octopus heads. They use powerful mental abilities
(psionics) to mind control, paralyze, and wipe the minds of their
enemies. Instead of a mouth, they have a beak surrounded by powerful
tentacles. That beak, combined with their mind-destroying magic, allows
them to attack their victims and literally suck the brains from their
head. Mind flayers are weird, dangerous, and feel right out of the
strange sci-fi fantasy of the 1970s. When a mind flayer shows up,
players of Dungeons & Dragons know that things just got _very_ real.
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Theyre evil, they eat brains, and they enslave other races. So when
Dungeons & Dragons Lead Designer Mike Mearls suggests that theyre a
species that might generate empathy in a player, my ears perk up.
It all hinges on the word tragedy. In an interview with Todd Kenreck,
Mearls says this about mind flayers:
Mind Flayers have very powerful mind powers, that will let
them dominate entire kingdoms, entire worlds, so they can
once again ascend and rule everything. That, to me, makes
them very interesting, because it's very scary what they do.
They eat brains, but they are also, in some ways, they're
very evil, but there's this element of tragedy to this story,
that they are a fallen empire, and they're hunted mercilessly
by the Githzerai and Githyanki.
To be clear, what Mearls is proposing here is generally in line with
the storytelling of the fantasy epics that first inspired D&D. . The
mind flayers once dominated all of known reality. They had a powerful
empire, and now they have been driven into the dark corners of the
world where they plan to rise again; they want to fulfill their destiny
as a people. This is the stuff of fantasy stories: Aragorn is the
rightful ruler of Middle Earth, and The Lord of the Rings gets him from
wilderness wanderer to king.
The difference is here, of course, is that the mind flayers are a
species of slavers. Their empire was founded on the back of _entire
species_ of slaves. One of these species was the gith, and Voloss
Guide to Monsters clarifies that the mind flayers relied on the gith to
provide physical labor and sustenance when other forms of sustenance
grew thin. While the gith eventually rebelled and overcame the mind
flayers as an empire, they still remain as a species in the multiverse
of official Dungeons & Dragons canon (which is why you can find them in
your games). The gith still hunt them, and the mind flayers live in
fear of being found.
Mearlss choice of the word tragedy in his description of the
remnants of the mind flayer empire is based in the way that the current
D&D books describe them. Volos Guide to Monsters tells us two
important facts about the mind flayer. First, each individual is merely
a subservient creature to massive creature that houses each mind flayer
colonys collective consciousness, the Elder Brain. Second, each Elder
Brain views itself as both a refugee and a victim, forced into hiding
by barbaric monsters. Each of these Elder Brains sees itself as a
savior of the mind flayer race and a living memorial.
The way that Mearls tells the story, its clear that its possible for
us to experience some empathy with these creatures. After all, theyre
the last of their kind. Theyre at the end of their rope, and this is
the position from which our fantasy heroes rise. These are creatures
being written as the heroes of their own story (a method Ive critiqued
before in this column). The official writeups on mind flayers,
including Mearlss summary of how they function in the game, gives you
all of the tools and backstory to make the mind flayers into the heroes
of their own story. It allows a Dungeon Master to ask philosophical
questions of their players: Are players comfortable with extinguishing
a species? Would players act the same way if they were put in the same
position? What if you were them? And, explicitly, by highlighting these
qualities in the written D&D manuals and presenting them in an
audience-facing interview, Mearls is suggesting that this is how
theyre intended to be run.
The problem with this way of both running a game and designing a
villain in a tabletop campaign is that you can justify literally any
behavior this way. Anyone can make the claim that they are meant to be
in the place of power. When white nationalists chant blood and soil
or get tattoos of 14 words, theyre doing so in order to make a claim
about something that they had that they perceive that theyve lost. To
be clear, this too is a fantasy tale. There was never an all-white
Europe. Whiteness was never the sole generator of philosophical,
scientific, or artistic progress. Nevertheless, these groups evoke that
fictional past in order to conjure up a tragedy that a contemporary
audience can empathize with.
In the fictional of Dungeons & Dragons, mind flayers were, and continue
to be, slavers. If they came to dominate the world again, they would
still be mind-controlling, freedom-annihilating slavers. The work of
painting mind flayers as the heroes of their own cultural story is that
their cultural narrative is ultimately one that asks us to have empathy
toward with slave owners.
This critique isnt just about Mike Mearlss particular flavor of mind
flayer. Instead, I think that the example of Mearlss interview opens
up an important space to talk about what really matters in Dungeons &
Dragons: your own table. At the end of the day, Mearls is demonstrating
that it is very easy to fall into equivocating situations that,
accidentally or not, suggest that subjugated people fighting against
their oppressors are somehow the exact same as the people who are doing
the oppression. To run the mind flayers as the heroes of their own
story, to extend empathy to the mind flayer as a storytelling method,
is to entertain, for even a brief moment, that their rise to power
might be ok. Everyone has a different point of view, right? Cant mind
flayers exist in the world alongside all of the other fantasy species
with their respective fantasy ideas about how the world should work?
The formerly-enslaved gith hunt the mind flayers across the universe
because they know that any advancement in the mind flayer agenda spells
the doom of that universe. If the mind flayers regain their foothold,
if they can be the savior of their species, then they will pursue their
goals without fail. Those goals are subjugation and slavery of everyone
else.
I challenge individual DMs and players to think beyond the dynamics
that Mearls and contemporary D&D gives us for the mind flayers. Maybe a
species of slavers doesnt need their story told at your table, and
maybe individual designers should avoid creating empathetic scenarios
for fantasy creatures that would put the entire universe under their
boot heel. Maybe the good storytelling of villains being the heroes
of their own stories is, in fact, bad storytelling because it demands
empathy for mind-controlling Nazis.
: apocalypses, deaths, bosses, and all sorts of other finalities.
The mind flayer might be the creature of Dungeons & Dragons. Theyre
purple humanoids with octopus heads. They use powerful mental abilities
(psionics) to mind control, paralyze, and wipe the minds of their
enemies. Instead of a mouth, they have a beak surrounded by powerful
tentacles. That beak, combined with their mind-destroying magic, allows
them to attack their victims and literally suck the brains from their
head. Mind flayers are weird, dangerous, and feel right out of the
strange sci-fi fantasy of the 1970s. When a mind flayer shows up,
players of Dungeons & Dragons know that things just got _very_ real.
Advertisement
Theyre evil, they eat brains, and they enslave other races. So when
Dungeons & Dragons Lead Designer Mike Mearls suggests that theyre a
species that might generate empathy in a player, my ears perk up.
It all hinges on the word tragedy. In an interview with Todd Kenreck,
Mearls says this about mind flayers:
Mind Flayers have very powerful mind powers, that will let
them dominate entire kingdoms, entire worlds, so they can
once again ascend and rule everything. That, to me, makes
them very interesting, because it's very scary what they do.
They eat brains, but they are also, in some ways, they're
very evil, but there's this element of tragedy to this story,
that they are a fallen empire, and they're hunted mercilessly
by the Githzerai and Githyanki.
To be clear, what Mearls is proposing here is generally in line with
the storytelling of the fantasy epics that first inspired D&D. . The
mind flayers once dominated all of known reality. They had a powerful
empire, and now they have been driven into the dark corners of the
world where they plan to rise again; they want to fulfill their destiny
as a people. This is the stuff of fantasy stories: Aragorn is the
rightful ruler of Middle Earth, and The Lord of the Rings gets him from
wilderness wanderer to king.
The difference is here, of course, is that the mind flayers are a
species of slavers. Their empire was founded on the back of _entire
species_ of slaves. One of these species was the gith, and Voloss
Guide to Monsters clarifies that the mind flayers relied on the gith to
provide physical labor and sustenance when other forms of sustenance
grew thin. While the gith eventually rebelled and overcame the mind
flayers as an empire, they still remain as a species in the multiverse
of official Dungeons & Dragons canon (which is why you can find them in
your games). The gith still hunt them, and the mind flayers live in
fear of being found.
Mearlss choice of the word tragedy in his description of the
remnants of the mind flayer empire is based in the way that the current
D&D books describe them. Volos Guide to Monsters tells us two
important facts about the mind flayer. First, each individual is merely
a subservient creature to massive creature that houses each mind flayer
colonys collective consciousness, the Elder Brain. Second, each Elder
Brain views itself as both a refugee and a victim, forced into hiding
by barbaric monsters. Each of these Elder Brains sees itself as a
savior of the mind flayer race and a living memorial.
The way that Mearls tells the story, its clear that its possible for
us to experience some empathy with these creatures. After all, theyre
the last of their kind. Theyre at the end of their rope, and this is
the position from which our fantasy heroes rise. These are creatures
being written as the heroes of their own story (a method Ive critiqued
before in this column). The official writeups on mind flayers,
including Mearlss summary of how they function in the game, gives you
all of the tools and backstory to make the mind flayers into the heroes
of their own story. It allows a Dungeon Master to ask philosophical
questions of their players: Are players comfortable with extinguishing
a species? Would players act the same way if they were put in the same
position? What if you were them? And, explicitly, by highlighting these
qualities in the written D&D manuals and presenting them in an
audience-facing interview, Mearls is suggesting that this is how
theyre intended to be run.
The problem with this way of both running a game and designing a
villain in a tabletop campaign is that you can justify literally any
behavior this way. Anyone can make the claim that they are meant to be
in the place of power. When white nationalists chant blood and soil
or get tattoos of 14 words, theyre doing so in order to make a claim
about something that they had that they perceive that theyve lost. To
be clear, this too is a fantasy tale. There was never an all-white
Europe. Whiteness was never the sole generator of philosophical,
scientific, or artistic progress. Nevertheless, these groups evoke that
fictional past in order to conjure up a tragedy that a contemporary
audience can empathize with.
In the fictional of Dungeons & Dragons, mind flayers were, and continue
to be, slavers. If they came to dominate the world again, they would
still be mind-controlling, freedom-annihilating slavers. The work of
painting mind flayers as the heroes of their own cultural story is that
their cultural narrative is ultimately one that asks us to have empathy
toward with slave owners.
This critique isnt just about Mike Mearlss particular flavor of mind
flayer. Instead, I think that the example of Mearlss interview opens
up an important space to talk about what really matters in Dungeons &
Dragons: your own table. At the end of the day, Mearls is demonstrating
that it is very easy to fall into equivocating situations that,
accidentally or not, suggest that subjugated people fighting against
their oppressors are somehow the exact same as the people who are doing
the oppression. To run the mind flayers as the heroes of their own
story, to extend empathy to the mind flayer as a storytelling method,
is to entertain, for even a brief moment, that their rise to power
might be ok. Everyone has a different point of view, right? Cant mind
flayers exist in the world alongside all of the other fantasy species
with their respective fantasy ideas about how the world should work?
The formerly-enslaved gith hunt the mind flayers across the universe
because they know that any advancement in the mind flayer agenda spells
the doom of that universe. If the mind flayers regain their foothold,
if they can be the savior of their species, then they will pursue their
goals without fail. Those goals are subjugation and slavery of everyone
else.
I challenge individual DMs and players to think beyond the dynamics
that Mearls and contemporary D&D gives us for the mind flayers. Maybe a
species of slavers doesnt need their story told at your table, and
maybe individual designers should avoid creating empathetic scenarios
for fantasy creatures that would put the entire universe under their
boot heel. Maybe the good storytelling of villains being the heroes
of their own stories is, in fact, bad storytelling because it demands
empathy for mind-controlling Nazis.
--
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.