Brennan Lee Mulligan Explains Dimension 20's Sensitive Storytelling  

If you are revisiting this video, you might have noticed that its name and thumbnail have been changed. I'd like to explain my motives for why: 1. There was this wrong misconception that what Brennan says in this video is what *every storyteller* should do when in fact this was just for TV and other media productions who need to be sensitive for their audiences. You can do what you want in your private home games. 2. After joining a discord server associated with D20 (but not Dropout's official one), I found a discussion about this video that dawned on me that people think this was "2 straight cis guys making a lgbt sensitivity video" and that was never my intention. This video also contains a discussion about race and not just LGBT. So I opted to go with a neutral black background. In any case, thanks for watching and for the constructive criticism. I'm happy with the discussion this video generated, but I also realized that posting it as it was caused confusion. We learn every day.

The fact that Dimension 20, a show that has POC and LGBTQIA cast members and staff, still hire sensitivity consultants, shows you can never be too considerate to your audience.

Actually, contrary to what Brennan says here, none of the characters in A Crown of Candy were bad eggs. I don't think we met any egg people, actually.

Some recurring themes I see in the comments here that I want to debunk: - Being sensitive makes the story weaker - no, it's not. It makes it richer by taking a group you painted in a singular light and expanding on it to show it's more than the story says. - Private tables can't hire a sensitivity consultant - they don't need to - sensitivity in media is mainly required for big far-reaching productions like TV shows. If you're playing a home game, have a session zero with your players and explain the world to them. If there's something they give you a hard pass on, rebuild it together. I'll add more as I see them recurring. If any sensitivity consultants are watching and want to lend their experienced views, please feel free to comment below!

one thing i like about Brennan is when portraying people of color as a yt person he doesnt do over the top accents like THIS MAN IS BLACK SO HE SOUNDS "BLACK"

I am suddenly struck by the memory of so many different popular franchises that so clearly did not hire sensitivity consultants when they _really should have._ Like, Dimension 20 and how it does inclusivity and representation fuckin rules, so evidently bringing on a consultant is well worth it. Props to Brennan and the gang for caring enough to make sure they did it right.

Also Brennan is very good at being funny while being sensitive. Seen way too many comedians who claim to be sensitive just put on a boring seminar without any punchlines

Some people may look at this and say "Why go through so much work just to cater to minorities?" Speaking as a member of a 'minority' (even though as a Chinese I am part of technically the most populous ethnicity in the world), I put in a lot of mental work trying to navigate through toxicity, conscious or otherwise, in my media, social circles, politics, etc. I have to brace myself on social media to see a racial slur, or to watch my language in a chatroom because I don't know what kind of reaction I will get, or to see racism perpetrated against people who look like me, or even people of a different minority, because I know that bigots and extremists don't care which minority they persecute. For people like Brennan and the Dimension 20 people to put in the effort to be sensitive, which, and I swear I'm not trying to play misery poker here, is a tiny amount compared to the effort POC and LGBTQIA people need to exert every waking moment of their lives, is incredibly welcome.

Once again, Brennan Lee Mulligan shows himself to be one of the greatest humans to ever walk this earth

The royal lesbians in ACoC were just amazing

I am so bloody glad that someone finally recognizes the presence of medieval European POC (despite how many include orcs and elves but can’t image someone who isn’t white)

I forget who it was, but there was a character Lou just assumed was white. I think because they were in a position of power. Then Brennan voiced them as a POC and Lou was blown away. Brennan was like “Why they gotta be white!?”

I remember loving this part of the interview and I still do

This was a, um, controversial opinion at a few tables I've played at in the past... but I've always believed that unless your story / setting is SPECIFICALLY designed to address and tackle issues like racism, sexism, and homophobia/transphobia then those issues simply should not be present. If the verisimilitude of your world-building relies on the propagation of harmful aggressions like racism, then you're probably just not that creative. I don't give a shit if medieval europe was racist, patriarchal, and xenophobic, I'm not playing D&D (a literal fantasy) so that my DM or other players can sexually or verbally harass my character.

As weird as it may be considering everyone is food-people, there are a few characters I feel are Black/PoC-coded quite well in ACoC. Amathar and his daughters, Caramelinda, Lapin, Belisabeth Brassica, Gooey... Probably tons more. And even if it isn't explicitly stated as such, I think most other characters have lended themselves well to being portrayed as non-white in most fan art I've seen. Same with queerness. I've seen a headcanon from a fan-artist that a certain candyfloss monk is trans and honestly, I can see it. Not least because of his color scheme 🏳️‍⚧️

I love that he brought up disability, and that D20 has included non-terrible disability representation for years. It's amazing to not have to settle for "Well, at least they're cool with queer people" in terms of representation.

How did you get the chance to interview Brennan??! I've seen a bunch of snippets now I love your questions and vibe. Just subscribed

I think its important to not make the game about inclusivity, but to include everyone naturally. Brennan does a great job with this. The points being made about it making the story weaker has to do with where you draw this line. If the narrative is intentionally "showing off" inclusivity then it comes off as ingenuine. But, again, its handled well.

I’ll add that there were communities in medieval Europe who were either “blind” about queerness or confused but accepting about queerness. In local communities, there were countless ways people dealt with local queer people. So yeah!

That's so cool they still hire staff for that. I mean they should, but still. Great interview clips, I'm going to have to check out the full ones when I get the time

I remember watching The Unsleeping City and just being too caught up on Robert Moses being transphobic to realize he had revealed a clue

And here I thought a show about food people would be the one thing that didn't need sensitivity consultants.

That's a question I've been asking myself pretty often about my setting and the themes within. As a white, western European, denouncing things such as colonialism is easy, but depicting it is something else completely. It's no trouble writing caricatures of colonial Europeans, but when it comes to the ones who were colonized, it gets difficult. It's impossible for me alone to respectfully draw inspiration from African or Native American cultures, but in the same way choosing to deliberately write "non-coded" people seems like some pretty bad erasure of experiences that are still lived today irl.

Thank you a lot for asking him this question! I’m currently working with my uni on how to improve the inclusivity and general acceptance of different people without any bias among the academic and administrative stuff, and this video apparently helped me with some ideas, W interviewer W question W Brennan. Happy pride month everyone! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

So, on that last question.. Are there sentient potatoes in the world? If not, then do they get sentience after processing into chips. If so, Is it asexual reproduction, or a horrible necromantic rite that births abominations of dead sentient creatures into new ones?

I love the tension that comes up when you compare the idea of race between homo-sapiens versus the idea of race between different sapient creatures that can directly communicate. In either a fantasy setting or sci-fi, alien type setting.

Such awesome and thought-provoking conversation but I gotta say every time Brennan laughs while mildly punching his palm, it makes me feel things like sirrrr 🥵😂 Happy Pride y'all!!! 🏳‍🌈🏳‍🌈🏳‍🌈

That's what's so fun about dnd and world building in general. You get to create an entire new world, why not just take out some of the bad shit that is/was real. Obviously that will be more difficult if there is an audience, since you don't want to downplay any real issues, but like why not go hog wild for your private play sessions? Many of us do these things as a form of escapism, so why not create a world without the concept of race or gender or class or whatever? Just delete what's bothering you irl and create something new. I once did a couple of sessions in a post human cyberspace world, where every character was an AI. They were different kinds of AI's, but there was pretty much no concept of gender what so ever. We did femme and masc code many characters anyways, because it's fun, but we used a generic it/its for basically everyone. (except for the bbeg, who was totally not elon musks brain that was being kept alive millions of years after humanity had died out.)

The perfect follow up question.

The way I play my game is that I say discrimination exists but not for sexuality or race within a species. If there is a character who is racist against a different species, that person is 99/100 a villian or at least a scumbag and the characters know they aren't ment to be seen as normal. Other discrimination exists within context. Like a country that was ravaged by a mage war banning and persecuting wizards, etc.

Slam dunk interview.

Engagement for the engagement god!

Such a wonderful question

lol at all the overly-sensitive people in the comments who think that the producer of a TV show talking about how they handle inclusivity in his TV show is somehow criticizing them for not hiring a sensitivity trainer. All this sensitivity stuff is for the audience, folks, not the players. Run your gave of 6 friends however you want. If watching this makes you feel attacked, maybe you've got some self-exploration to do.

Very nice interview in a calm atmosphere, but I still don't rly understand how skin colour can be an issue in a game where everybody is made out of food. I wouldn't even know how to play them as a person who represents a certain skin colour. The part with sexuality and gender identity is easier to grasp for me even if this is a topic that rarely come up at the table (cause its no big deal since we rarely have romantic or sexual relationships between characters)

lovedddddd this! gonna save this vid for my DM group chat for sure

Isn't it easier and simpler to just be chill and compassionate on the table? Virtue isn't a difficult and serious business, being nice comes with being easygoing and accepting of all kinds of human expression, whatever that me be.

There is a difference between sanitizing everything interesting out of your story (Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft versus Heroes of Horror), and remaining attached to bad stereotypes, ideas, or scenarios that were never true or helpful to begin with. Trying to be aware of the latter is only ever good.

Representation is for the audience not the characters in the story. I love consistency in world building but I agree that it’s probably better for the audience to make changes. The Dragon Prince has lots of diversity of skin color. The variety of skin tones isn’t done because travel across the 5 kingdoms is easy, it’s done because travel is easy now and a diverse group of kids are going to be watching it and growing up with each other.

Happy pride 😁✌️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Thank you 🏳️‍🌈

I've only recently started watching D20 and they're already streets ahead on this. Actually having PoC at the table and behind the scenes means it's not just virtue signalling, and they still do more on top of that which very much shows. I also get the sense that if they did do something that was a bit off, they wouldn't hide behind those consultants, they'd admit it, address it and learn from it. Of course whether that happens might remain to be seen, but it's far better than continuing with material that is very clearly (even if unintentionally) racist.

I was going to try and write a story about a king who write love poems to his secret male lover who called "The King's Love Notes" came up with the concept while messing with kali linux CLI

אני: היי סרטון עם ברנן לי מוליגן אני: * מסתכלת על הערוץ * אני: * מתה *

Wait a sec... who was the bag of chips?

For the algorithm ❤️

its a great video, but i came away a bit disappointed, as the answer to the title question was basically just hire a sensitivity consultant, and frankly thats obviously not feasible for a home ttrpg campaign

Y'all remember skinny ghost?

Interesting

Team secrets

Why not just decide the background and identity of your characters the way everything else is decided in DnD, roll a dice? A dice by its very nature cannot be biased.

I honestly don’t really care about this topic I just find it funny how you connect the lgbtq+ community with sensitivity lol

I have a disagreement with Brennan about this video. If you're going to say you're going to use medieval European history, I have never heard anyone say that POC weren't in Europe at that time. There were. All you have to do to know about that is know that the Moors, Muslims from North Africa, invaded and conquered the Iberian Peninsula -- Spain -- in, I think, 1148(?). Additionally, during it's existence, the Roman Empire, which stretched from Ireland to Turkey, from Israel to Russia, dealt heavily in African slaves. So two things become apparent: 1) Religion was more important than race in medieval Europe, even during the polytheistic era of the Roman Empire before Emporer Constantine became a Christian. What god you believed in, whether it was Jehovah (Judaism), Allah (Islam), or Jesus Christ (Christianity), was more important than what race you were. 2) As slaves, historically, depending on if you are talking about European history, or the history of the Roman Empire, will depend on what the attitude towards slavery, thus POC, was. The Catholic Church issued a papal bull very early in medieval European history that said that black people were no better than cattle, therefore they had no actual legal status. This was in the early 1200s, I think. The Romans and the Moors, however, did treat slaves somewhat better. One example is that the Spanish, because of the Moors, allowed slaves to civilly sue their masters, which was evident even into Spanish control of colonies in the New World, when the Colonial period began during the Enlightenment. In Rome, slaves could earn their freedom via military service, and race actually did not matter, as both POC and whites, Slavs, were both held in slavery by the Romans. In the Byzantine Empire, really the Eastern Roman Empire, slaves were much more brown and dark brown people from Persia, rather than North Africa, because of the proximity to Islamic lands, given that the capital was the modern-day city of Istanbul, Turkey. The point here is that I have never heard anyone say that POC were not present in medieval European history. What is the case, however, is that due to the status many African and Middle Eastern slaves had in first, Rome, and then later European countries, they were merely disregarded and not paid attention to, thanks in no small part to the papal bulls issued by the Roman Catholic Church.

Sensitivity consultants... lol. Eugh

Wait... "sensitivity consultant" is a job? Someone gets payed to say how not to offend people??? I COULD TOTALLY DO THAT

I do not wish to be sensitive.

I love Brennan, Dimension 20 and the whole schtick. But wanted to bring up something that never sat well with me, specifically in Fantasy High. Here Brennan gives a nice talk about inclusivity, which is great and very important to evolving story telling, but in Fantasy High (spoilers) one of the big villains was very obviously a full blown stereotype of strict, orthodox, christians. They were hateful, homophobic, constantly described as thick headed, stupid or otherwise bigoted. When the heroes were fighting him, Brennan wouldn't stop to give the guy any character other than "angry, hateful, and stupid". A major plot point of one of the PCs was to discover how terrible this religion was and break free. I fucking loved that part of the campaign, Kristen was 100% my favorite character. But, it left me feeling like the show was saying "exclusivity and stereotyping is fine, as long as it's against white people or christians." Idk if this was ever addressed by Brennan, but hearing this schpeel about them putting effort into making their worlds inclusive and free of harmful stereotypes while one of their biggest stories is ripe with them rubs me the wrong way. Now, don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed Fantasy High and think that Brennan is a very enjoyable storyteller. But the heavy-handed "evil christianity" parallel with little to no redemption for the followers of psuedo christianity outside of just switching religions felt hypocritical. There's 0 chance Dimension 20 would've gone through the same story arc if Helio was based off of anything other than christianity. I haven't seen all of their other series though, so if there's an arc based off of stereotyping any other religion, let me hear it. In short, feels like the protection from hateful stereotypes is only for people who aren't a majority in the USA.

I find this speech about sensitivity kind of hypocritical since a large part of the character arcs of multiple characters in Crown of Candy is the fact that the queen's wife died so she had to marry a man and have children. "Sure, representation is important to me, that's why I buried my gays! :)"

Or you can just call everyone who does not like it a toxic fan.

I will actively make my games extremely racist and homophobic to balance out the universe

I wasn't going to watch this video because the reality of catering to an audience who gets offended by words is exhausting, but to help me better understand Brennan's worldview, it was good to, lest I remained ignorant of many things. Regardless, our world today (specifically in the US), are no doubt easily offended. We are raising up children into their late 20s through 40s and they're still children in their minds. Know these as a fact: To be offended by something is a choice and a weakness. To be so open-minded and inclusive of everything is folly. And love does not mean accepting everything as is. It's June. So called "pride month" - which I will never celebrate - as the lgbt community has shown itself to be the most intolerant, bigoted, discriminatory, and hypocritical community in the world. Doesn't mean each individual person in the community sucks, but the community as a whole: Basically equivalent to the toxicity of League of Legends, For Honor, COD, and Brawlhalla combined. Best way to describe that as a gamer myself. xD

im yet to see inclusivity with a person missing a limb for example as one of the main cast, or somebody thats actually grotesque, but no, you just include an array of sexual preferences, bam done, inclusive

Love the crew hate pride months sooooo

I think all this over focusing on people’s “identity” is what’s actually and ironically generating toxicity. Have more than a personality than your race or sexual orientation people.

Why the hell would I care about sensitivity in my fantasy campaing? Sensitive stories where you cannot explore offensive and dangerous ideas, where you need to be in a safe space are worthless in my opinion.

so much wasted money on useless consultants

Which idiot told them that there were POC in MEDIEVAL Europe? Late 1500 early 1600 sure, there were ships that could actually visit other parts outside of your sea, but medieval Europe?! Yeah, i truly wish to see dated example of something before 1400 that has POC in them. Mind you, Medieval era spans from 5th century to 15nth century, which means 400 to 1400 years. I am very curious how someone will explain how renewal (Humansim/Renesanse) happened centuries before because people were able to transverse seas and "rediscover" Helenistic art and architecture centuries before. But that being said, peeps... Its fantasy. If you want to put a used condom as a PC do it, no one is stopping you. If you want to include POC do it, again no one is stopping you. Just make sure to have continents a bit closer and tied by land if you want to make it "realistic".

This is stupid, and why I don't allow normies to play D&D

Fail. Talking about sensitive on eggshells and using the word "barbaric" which is one of the oldest ethnic slurs in existence. You shouldn't need sensitivity experts or consultants or anything like that. There will be villainous people in any heroic fantasy setting. Don't be overly sensitive about the fact people will be evil, bigoted, or cruel in the setting. The key is to frame it as a moral wrong while as the storyteller or actor you don't say things like "barbaric" in a negative light. The other isn't being bad for being the other. Doing bad things doesn't make you a bad person unless you have malicious intentions and/or refuse to change. And holding the idea idea that you are superior as a person for not having the perceived failings or weaknesses that you see in others is delusional and inherently hostile. It's okay to expect better out of someone who is doing or has done something harmful to other people, but don't hold them in contempt unless they aren't open to dialog or refuse to change. Of course someone engaged in a violent crime or open warfare that doesn't surrender needs to be stopped one way or the other. And it's natural to be outraged in the moment and have contempt then. But you should be able to contain and control that aggression, be capable of accepting prisoners, and merciful with defeated enemies. Those are heroic virtues. Looking down at other people you think are less enlightened is not a heroic virtue. It comes from the same place as racism, religious intolerance, and homophobia.

Yes there were non Eroupen people in Europe but to say they were erased is almost idiotic. Not talking about the ultra small number of non Eroupen people in Europe is just treating history like the giant subject it is. You can only teach so much and getting the broad strokes is more important than mentioning the few non Eroupen people who were there. Also for all the talk of sensitivity they still spent close to 10 minutes body shaming a male identified character who was just a jerk, not evil which is still not an excuse.

Why be sensitive in storytelling? What is the point? I say never deal with sensitivity shit or problem players, just let consequences come to them. Because (usually, at least I think so) a fantasy campaign or d&d campaign in general takes place in a time of struggle, it makes sense to make all of, or at least the majority of the NPCs extremely bigoted and paranoid. Hiring sensitivity consultants is like wasting your money on something: only Americans and idiot debils from the awful European countries do it.