Orientalist misadventures: An examination of monk class narratives and mechanics in Dungeons and Dragons, 1975-2024

Board Game Academics, March 2025
Published in Vol 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70380/3czjhl8t1

Katherine Dickey and Joshua Coslar

ABSTRACT

The central question that this paper evaluates is how the player class of monk in the popular fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons represents the real-world (and largely Asian) cultures on which it is based. We examined every Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook over the game’s history and multiple relevant supplements to determine the mechanics and narrative devices used to construct the character class in question, performing a textual analysis focused on change over time. We were able to distill the monk into some key features that repeatedly appear across editions and don’t neatly fit into classifications commonly applied to other player classes. We discovered that this othering of monks plays into many tropes of orientalism. This limits the inclusion of people who want to tell stories inspired by non-Western mythologies and experiences. As we believe these stories must be accessible to all people, we recommend further research into the psychological effects of this othering on players from various cultures.

Keywords: Dungeons & Dragons, monks, Orientalism, TTRPGs, inclusion, othering

INTRODUCTION

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is an extraordinarily popular tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) with roots in the pulp fantasy fiction of the 1950s and 60s and an estimated 50 million players since its first publishing in 1974. One library guide defines TTRPGs as “interactive collective storytelling games played by groups of people” (White, n.d.), where each player inhabits and portrays at least one character. Characters are divided into classes in TTRPGs: archetypes that determine the character’s mechanics and abilities. Players were first able to play as a monk as a “kit” or optional subclass of the priest class of character in the 1975 supplement of Blackmoor. In the 2024 edition of D&D (the most current at the time of writing), monks have developed into a class of their own, a martial (or fighting-based) category with access to supernatural powers, inspired by Asian martial arts media.

The aim of this work is to evaluate how Dungeons and Dragons represents disparate cultures by examining the monk class in the Player’s Handbooks and equivalent texts. We will inspect how the mechanics and narratives making up the character class of monk include and exclude the cultural contexts of the real world, historical movements and belief systems on which the class is based. We hope to assess the game’s shortcomings, biases, and inherent viewpoints because representation matters.

D&D is the most popular vehicle for collaborative storytelling within the TTRPG community, and many treat it as genre-agnostic, adapting the core mechanics of the system across fictional universes. Because of this popularity and utilitarian usage, it is important to examine the underpinnings of the core game and any potentially harmful effects it may have on marginalized communities. Everyone should be able to play D&D and include some piece of themselves, regardless of their cultural background. Such a widely consumed piece of media has a responsibility to represent the cultures it depicts well and fairly, especially when it may be some consumers’ primary interaction with those cultures. We chose to use the D&D monk as a case study due to its explicit inspirations in multiple texts from many Asian cultures.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Q1: What are the key features of the monk class?

Q2: What is the class of monk based on?

Q3: How have these things changed across editions?

Q4: How are these things similar to or dissimilar from the other classes in the game?

Q5: How well does the monk class represent the things it is based on?

We chose these questions because they build on one another to show what makes the monk class unique. They also ask whether the game (historically across editions) treats the monk and its inspirations with respect. Respect is core to inclusion, a tenet to which we believe the game’s designers should be striving.

LITERATURE REVIEW

ORIENTALISM AND MONKS

Orientalism was a term made popular by Edward Said in his 1978 work “Orientalism” to describe Western ideas of the East or “Orient.” King describes orientalism simply as “The acceptance of a basic opposition between Eastern and Western cultures” (King, 2010). Said understood orientalism, at least in part, as a colonial belief system rooted in structures of power. The “Orient” was created and defined by the West, specifically the empires of the British, the Americans, and the French (Said, 1978). Said says (and we are inclined to agree) that these beliefs matter due in part to the hegemonic structures that uphold European and European-American culture, saying “There is … the hegemony of European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness, usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter” (Said, 1978, p.7). This focus on the perceived superiority of the West over the East introduces questions within the study of orientalism of the importance of cultural inclusion and respect within the West, especially of people culturally, ethnically, or geographically from the East. Said’s work defines the East as those from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Gallaher (2016) breaks down Said’s work around orientalism into how exactly the West othered the East, “wherein western subjects produced the East, relying on this binary to homogenize (suggesting all were the same), feminize (suggesting they were the lesser of the two), and essentialize (suggesting in a reductive fashion that the region had underlying characteristics) that scripted the East as not western – as traditional, underdeveloped, decadent, greedy and so on” (Gallaher, 2016, p. 328). Homogenization is the facet of othering with which this paper primarily concerns itself.

Bowman (2020) speaks to essentialism in martial arts origin stories being used to justify both ethnic stereotyping and ethno-nationalism. Bowman also describes the current idea of martial arts as “Asian” as a result of the surge of dubbed, Hong Kong-made martial arts movies in the English-speaking world. He credits this, at least in part, with Asian martial arts’ emergence in the popular culture imagination in the 1970s and its dominance in the same sphere since.

Monks are a key part of orientalism and ideas of the Orient as it has been constructed in popular media (Iwamura, 2011). Iwamura points to a portrayal of the monk in pop culture as an older Asian man, usually protecting or teaching martial arts to a younger white person (often a child). Iwamura introduces the term “Virtual Orientalism” to point out how images of monks uphold hegemonic power in the West. Virtual orientalism refers to the importance of representations of monks in constructing popular opinions of the East and how those opinions are harmful and counter liberatory. Monks, as they have been portrayed in much of American pop culture, flatten and homogenize the cultures they are supposed to represent (Iwamura, 2017). As writers interested in liberation, we wanted to study whether and how the D&D monk participates in this virtual orientalism.

Orientalism has been discussed in the context of D&D before. “A skeptical reading of this blurb [on the back of Oriental Adventures (Gygax, et. al, 1985)] suggests that the success of Oriental Adventures was predicated upon a racist and sexist culture of American, Canadian, and British gamers who were interested in barnstorming through the gates of the ‘Orient’ to confront barbaric hordes in order to plunder the land’s riches. A more generous reading would suggest that a racist and sexist culture of American, Canadian, and British gamers simply wanted to develop a finer sense of appreciation for the another [sic.] more ‘exotic’ culture” (Trammell, 2016, pp. 1). Trammel’s work, however, does not look much at the changing legacy of D&D and instead focused on the 1985 Oriental Adventures campaign setting more than anything else.

A DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS PRIMER

Dungeons and Dragons was introduced in 1974 as a continuation of the wargaming hobby. Wargaming was the re-enacting and relitigation of past battles via figurines moved around on a tabletop. It started as a continuation of the strategy of chess and was popularized in the court of Otto Von Bismarck in the 1860s as a training exercise. Eventually, dice were added, and math was tabulated to see the results. (For more history, see Ewalt, 2013.) In more modern times, wargaming draws the most rule-abiding nerds because it follows sometimes incomprehensible strictures, and the historical material isn’t exactly sexy. In addition, “The typical game convention attendee is a middle-aged white guy” (Ewalt, 2013, p. 45). 

D&D uses rules borrowed from medieval table-top strategy games — repurposed to represent individual heroes rather than large armies — where players control their character as they explore dungeons full of magical relics and mythical monsters. The players are guided through their adventures by a referee, eventually referred to as the dungeon master or game master (DM or GM, for short). The dungeon master controls every part of the world not controlled by the players. Players define their characters by choosing options including race, background, and class. 

Classes in Dungeons and Dragons enable both mechanical and narrative choices; they simultaneously define what in-game tasks a character is good at, while also imparting information about where, why, and how a character is trained. As players advance through the game, their characters increase in efficacy, represented by gaining levels in their characters’ classes. These levels improve and unlock abilities for characters to use in combat or to solve puzzles. Classes are based on pulp-fantasy archetypes and tropes, and function both as a billet and a descriptor. Classes have included wizards, priests, warriors, thieves, and other pulp fantasy standards. Throughout the game’s lifespan, there are many iterations of the class mechanic, though currently 12 “core” classes make up the majority of gameplay. 

METHODS

This study performs a textual analysis of the monk class in Dungeons and Dragons. We start with its introduction as a kit of the priest class in the Blackmoor campaign setting and supplement published in 1975, and move through the subsequent Player’s Handbooks, the original edition of the Oriental Adventures campaign setting, and the Complete Fighter rules supplement from AD&D 2e. 

The full list of consulted materials is as follows:

• Supplement II: Blackmoor ​(Arneson, 1975)
• Advanced D&D Players Handbook (Gygax, 1978)
• Oriental Adventures (Gygax et al., 1985)
• Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2e (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Player’s Handbook, 1989)
• The Complete Fighter’s Handbook (Allston, 1989)
• Dungeons and Dragons 3e OR “Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook: Core Rulebook 1” (Cook et al., 2000)
• Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e OR “Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook: Core Rulebook I v.3.5” (Cook et al., 2003)
• Dungeons and Dragons 4e Player’s Handbook 3 OR “Player’s Handbook 3: A 4th Edition D&D Core Rulebook” (Mearls et al., 2010)
• Dungeons and Dragons 5e OR “Player’s Handbook” (Mearls & Crawford, 2014)
• Dungeons and Dragons 2024 Player’s Handbook (Crawford, 2024)

These texts were chosen because they construct the monk class as it has been able to be played without reskinning or homebrew (in rules-as-written games [RAW]) from 1975 to 2024, which means it is the most standard way the game has been played in that period. RAW games are also theoretically the way the game is intended to be played by the authors of D&D. Garcia (2017) discussed the cultural production both within and around games as significant. This paper concerns itself primarily with the cultural production within the text of the game and the potentially harmful effects it may have on that secondary cultural production around the game. 

For this study, we carefully read each selected work in full and took notes on the construction of the monk class, focusing on research questions one through four. After all the texts were read, we reread our notes and looked for patterns. We used these patterns to boil down the class to key features that mechanically and narratively make it unique from the other classes in the game. The unit of analysis is each text that we analyzed. We also compared the monk class’s mechanics and narrative to those of the other core classes in the game, as well as to the material that was said to inspire the creation and formation of the monk, to determine the accuracy of cultural depiction and the degree of inclusion of the monk in the wider game.

ANALYSIS

KEY FEATURES

Each edition has different versions of the monk, but the key features we isolated as being maintained across most or all editions are the pursuit of personal perfection, resistance to certain mind and body effects, the use of ki and/or supernatural powers, an often lawful alignment, a tendency to be unarmed or armed with specialty monk weapons, and the inability to be armored. These features are important because they create continuity in the monk across the editions of D&D, and to show how the monk is one way or another, we must define it.

The pursuit of personal perfection is the narrative core of the monk class in most editions of D&D. The third edition of D&D asserts that, “She [the monk] cares for the perfection of her art and, thereby, her personal perfection. Her goal is to achieve a state that is, frankly, beyond the mortal realm” (Cook et al., 2000). Monks in D&D have very little connection to community, even within their monasteries. They hone their minds and bodies, which defines many of the powers granted as they level up. 

The resistances gained by monks are considered a result of the pursuit of personal perfection. Narratively, after leveling up, monks  control their bodies so well that they cannot get sick, be poisoned, avoid spell effects, and even age. In one such ability in the fourth edition, this manifests as not allowing things like broken ground, difficult terrain, or bodies of water to impede the controlled steps of the monk, called “Careful Stride” (Mearls et al., 2010). Due to this pursuit of personal perfection, monks can also control their minds to avoid mind reading, mind control, and other adverse effects across editions.

Monks in D&D have supernatural powers that are mechanically and narratively different from those of other classes. They are empowered by an internal connection to the supernatural rather than by a deity, patron, or arcane knowledge. One mechanical difference includes ki points, a system where monks get a certain number of points, depending on level, number,  and length of rests, that can be spent on supernatural powers. Ki is described as mystic energy that flows through monks. A ki strike, for example, turns an unarmed attack into a magical attack, which is likely to do more and different damage that may be more effective.

Monks are the only current core class able to specialize in unarmed fighting and martial arts. Other classes specialize in either weapons fighting or magic use. In addition, many monk weapons (like siangham, kama, nunchaku, and shuriken) are considered exotic. Non-monks would require extra specialization in order to effectively use those monk-specific weapons. Monks are also unable to effectively wear armor, which leads to constitution (which often manifests as the ability to take a hit) and dexterity (which often manifests as the ability to avoid a hit) being prioritized statistics for many monk players.

In some editions of D&D, players were required to choose an alignment for their characters across the axes of lawful to chaotic and good to evil. Monks in some editions are required to be lawful; in others, they are just encouraged. Third edition states “A monk’s training requires strict discipline. Only those that are lawful at heart are capable of undertaking it” (Cook et al., 2000). This kind of restriction is largely removed in later editions of the game.

These key features will allow us to compare the monk both to other classes and to the inspirations cited by the creators of the game, to evaluate the respect with which the game treats the monk.

INSPIRATIONS

To determine how well the fantasy monk represents real-world cultures, we must ascertain what cultures it is actually based on.

In Blackmoor (Arneson, 1975), monks are explicitly meant to be a combination of Fighting Man and Thief classes, creating a sort of trickster fighter with advanced healing powers and resistance to certain mind and body effects. There is no explicit cultural reference in this version of the monk. However, they could become grandmasters of certain realms at different levels, which indicates some inspiration from a formalized discipline, like chess or martial arts.

In the foreword of the original Oriental Adventures (Gygax et al., 1985), Gygax writes that the D&D monk was inspired by Brian Blume (one of the creators of the original version of D&D) and the book series “The Destroyer.” The “The Destroyer” series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir features a fictional martial art known as Sinanju taught by a Korean expert to a white American former cop (Gere Donovan Press). This relationship reflects the problematic dynamic that Iwamura wrote about and, therefore, furthers virtual orientalism. Sinanju does not seem to be based on any one martial art or cultural or religious practice. In both its inclusion in Oriental Adventures and the explicit mention of the “The Destroyer” series, the monk class, from there on, is meant to reflect “the Orient.”

Gygax also writes:

“Is the creator of this whole system about to state that Oriental character-types are unsuitable adventurers? Never! The fact of the matter is that the mixture of Occident and Orient was an unsuitable combination. The games stressed a European historical base and mythology. Even though the AD&D game monster roster ranges far afield, it is still of basically European flavor. The whole of these game systems are Occidental in approach, not Oriental—at least not in the sense of what is known as the Far East: China, Korea, Japan, and Mongolia” (Gygax et al., 1985, p. 3). 

While Gygax explicitly says he isn’t casting “Oriental character-types” as unsuitable, he does acknowledge that he believes the combination of Oriental characters (like monks) and Occidental settings (like almost everything published up to that point for D&D) to be unsuitable. This shows a distinctly Orientalist approach to representing Asian cultures, as it reflects the acceptance of this fundamental opposition between “Occident” and “Orient.” 

In AD&D 2e (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Player’s Handbook, 1989), monks are reintroduced as a kit of the priest class. On page 95 of AD&D 2e, the authors state, “A kit is more of a cultural description than anything else.” This is followed by an assertion on page 100 that “These monks are most appropriate for an oriental-flavored campaign, and the DM may wish to decide they [monks] cannot be used in his campaign.” This points to some “oriental” inspiration in the later editions of monk as well, and contributes to an ease of exclusion by DMs and settings in the rules as they are written.

As monks are the only class capable of specializing in an unarmed combat style in AD&D, definitions of martial arts are also of interest. The Complete Fighter’s Handbook (Allston, 1989) states on page 76, “The martial arts described in this section aren’t any real-world fighting style; they’re a combination of ‘generic’ martial-arts maneuvers in the tradition of martial-arts movies.” This homogenization of martial arts contributes to a homogenizing effect of the cultures that produce them.

Ki in the game seems to be inspired by the long-historied Chinese principle of “qi,” defined as life force or vital energy. Qigong is a movement system focused on moving the qi through a practitioner’s body (“Qigong,” 2024). This corresponds to the idea of ki in the game, an energy that can be moved through the monk’s body to empower certain supernatural abilities.

Despite the martial arts that monks practice in the game being explicitly generically based, some subclasses of monks seem to be based on specific martial arts or cultural or religious practices. The four base subclasses in the 2024 edition are the Warrior of Mercy, Warrior of Shadow, Warrior of the Elements, and Warrior of the Open Hand. The Warrior of Mercy is described as a wandering physician and seems inspired by medieval witch doctors. The Warrior of Shadow is the ninja subclass, explicitly meant to mirror the ninjas of Japan’s history, or at least pop culture representations thereof. The Warrior of the Elements harnesses the power of four elements, which is a common westernization of the practice of wuji (a religious practice that guides multiple martial arts) or xingyi (one such martial art), similar to what is seen in Avatar: The Last Airbender or Dragon Ball Z. The Warrior of the Open Hand has been described by one author of this paper simply as “just Bruce Lee.”

CHANGE OVER TIME

The change over time is important because it shows the growth and change possible in the game. Because it is not a static ruleset, this question is central to our thesis in that it demonstrates exactly how the game can be changed for better or for worse.

In Blackmoor (Arneson, 1975), monks are introduced as a subclass of clerics. Within the construct of a player’s character’s class, additional choices can alter the mechanical ability and narrative direction of a given character. The Blackmoor Supplement ​(Arneson, 1975) introduces subclasses, which are optionally chosen in addition to the class, and often provide additional mechanical or narrative benefits and restrictions. Throughout the editions of the game, this additional choice within the class mechanic is supported as a way to provide cultural and narrative context to a character. In its second edition (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Player’s Handbook, 1989) “kits” are introduced as the direct successor to subclasses. Kits are more mechanically standardized than subclasses and remain optional. Optional mechanics to customize the performance and context of classes continue until the 4th edition (Mearls et al., 2010), which introduces Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies as class customizing choices designed into the base rules. Many of the options presented within those mechanics are directly inspired by the kits and subclasses in previous editions. With the 5th edition of the game (Mearls & Crawford, 2014), subclasses return—this time as a mandatory mechanic within the progression of the various classes. In the 2024 update to that same edition (Crawford, 2024), the progression of subclasses is standardized, and each of the twelve core classes is republished with four subclasses to choose from. Subclasses, kits, and their variations represent a character’s’ specialization within the vocation the class represents. A player whose character is a Fighter, for instance, might choose to have their character specialize in using magical trick arrows and take the Arcane Archer subclass.

From its introduction as a subclass in the Blackmoor Supplement ​(Arneson, 1975) to the  Oriental Adventures supplement (Gygax et al., 1985) and the Second Edition of the base game (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Player’s Handbook, 1989), the monk was an optional modification to extant classes, not one of the core classes supported by the base rules. With the introduction of 3rd Edition (Cook et al., 2000) and each subsequent installment after, the monk archetype becomes supported as a core class, containing its own subclasses and customization options. 

A player wishing to play a monk character in 1975 would choose the priest class and take the optional monk subclass or kit, while a player in 2024 would choose the monk as their class and, as part of the mandatory progression mechanic of the game, choose a subclass such as Warrior of the Open Hand. In the 1975 example, our player optionally chooses to limit their character’s access to armor in exchange for more advanced healing and combat abilities than other Priest characters have access to. In the 2024 example, every player regardless of class chooses a specialization at the third progression level of their class, and our player’s choice of Warrior of the Open Hand gives combat options that a monk character who chose a different subclass would not have access to. An Open Hand monk character would develop more resilience in combat against Dungeon Master controlled enemies than other monk characters, but would not have access to the magical abilities of The Warrior of the Elements, another 2024 monk subclass.

Mechanically, many of the features present in the Blackmoor supplement still run through the 5e and 2024 monk, though with fewer restrictions. Now, there is no alignment restriction, and any race/species is possible. Quivering Palm in 5e is an ability restricted under the subclass of Way of the Open Hand, but it still exists in much the same form. As a monk levels up, they can still gain advanced healing abilities and resistances to hypnosis and telepathy.

In AD&D’s first edition, monks were their own class, but moved back to a kit of priests in AD&D 2e. In 3e, the monk class became a core class again and moved from having magical/religious abilities to having supernatural abilities. The ki points system is present in the game from the third to the fifth edition. This is changed to focus points in the 2024 edition of the game, though mechanically, it remains much the same. 

In 4e, the monk is one of four psionic core classes, a departure from every other edition. Psionicism was a mechanic introduced in 4e as inspired by science fiction more than the pulp fantasy roots of most of the game. It referred to inner-fueled, alien, or mystical powers. In 5e, most claims to psionicism were abandoned in favor of calling the monk’s power source magical.

OTHER CLASSES

Monks are mechanically and narratively different from any other class in the game. This othering is important because when the only class coded as Asian and explicitly inspired by “Oriental” cultures is separated from the others by narratives and mechanics, it furthers the potential for othering of players from those same backgrounds and limits the stories we can tell. 

In addition to being a martial class, monks’ power is classed as supernatural or psionic. In some editions, they have spells or powers that could be described as magical, yet narratively, they are usually explicitly classed as supernatural. In Blackmoor, monks are a subclass of cleric. In AD&D 2e, monks are a kit of priest. In both these cases, their power is considered divine. However, even in Blackmoor, Arneson writes that “Monks have no magical abilities per se” ​(Arneson, 1975, p. 7, emphasis Arneson). The text describes their class abilities as “other abilities of a specialized nature” (Arneson, 1975, p. 5). This shows how, despite their powers mimicking the magic of the rest of the game, they are described as having powers that are “other.” 

In AD&D, monks are their own character class described as “the most unusual of all characters, the hardest to qualify for, and perhaps, the most deadly” (Gygax, 1978, p. 30). Even in AD&D, monks are made to be an outlier with no explanation for their mystical powers. 

There are other martial classes and subclasses that also use magic, like the paladin (or holy warrior) or the Eldritch Knight subclass of the fighter class. Unlike these classes, which gain their power from things like a god or arcane knowledge, after the move back to being a core class in 3e, the monk is described as “inner-directed, capable of a private, mystic connection to the spiritual world” (Cook et al., 2000, p. 38). They are the only class whose power is described as mystical, spiritual, or exotic. 

The other magical classes have arcane, martial, divine, or primal power sources, as described in 4e. Monk was redeveloped in 4e to have psionic powers, along with the new classes of ardent, battlemind, and psion (Mearls et al., 2010). Monk is the only psionic class from 4e to remain a core class in 5e. Psionic powers are alien both in their science fiction origin and the way they are flavored narratively as other.

In 5e, monks’ powers are described as magical, finally removing them from the othering that has plagued the class since its inception. However, that brings us to the ki points system. All other magic users in D&D use spell slots in addition to the distinct magical abilities granted by each class. Spell slots are a resource used to cast magic. Each magic user gains so many spell slots of certain levels, depending on their level, class, and number and length of rests. In order to cast more powerful spells, a player needs higher-level spell slots. 

However, monks use ki or focus points. They gain so many points (depending on level and number of rests) that can be spent to “fuel” ki-powered abilities, which are narratively distinct from spells. Ki is mentioned as a part of the monk’s build starting in the first Oriental Adventures supplement in 1985 and continues being used as a mechanic through 5e. The 2024 edition changes ki to focus points, but otherwise, the mechanic remains the same. By using ki or focus points rather than spell slots, monks are othered not only narratively but mechanically.

REPRESENTATION

 

Because the D&D monk is based on the trope of the Oriental monk, it is important to deconstruct how well it represents the myriad cultures that are lumped in. In Oriental Adventures, Gygax explicitly said that “a mixture of Occident and Orient was an unsuitable combination” (Gygax et al., 1985, p. 3) and allowed for the exclusion of monks from western-inspired fantasy settings. This is the most explicit mention of the othering that characterizes the treatment of the monk class across editions of D&D. 

Another coauthor, Cook, states in the foreword of the same text, “There is very little point in doing a book about Oriental culture if the material is not accurate. But accuracy can often be unplayable or just unacceptable. Accuracy here would mean stricter class structures, less chance for player advancement and less adventure. It would mean more fiddlely [sic.] rules for little details that would get in the way of play. And rules that might apply to a Japanese culture would certainly be incorrect in a strict Chinese culture! Furthermore, the world presented had to be what people think the Orient is, not necessarily what it actually is” (Gygax et al., 1985, p. 4, emphasis ours). This attitude towards representing the actual cultures on which these fantasies are based is dismissive from the start and begins to set the tone for the failures that follow.

One way the D&D monk fails at representing actual monks is its focus on individualism. D&D 3e states: “The individual monk, however, is unlikely to care passionately about championing commoners or amassing wealth. She cares for the perfection of her art and, thereby, her personal perfection” (Cook et al., 2000, p. 37). This quote demonstrates the lack of connection between monks and the external community. On the next page, 3e elaborates that monks are solitary even within their monasteries, saying, “Monks recognize each other as a select group set apart from the rest of the populace. They may feel kinship, but they also love to compete to see whose ki is strongest” (Cook et al., 2000, p. 38). This is in direct opposition to the communal nature of martial arts practice, monastic traditions, and their relationship with their surrounding communities. Stith posits that “The practice of martial arts is a radical act of community, as it relies on the consent of a group to perform violence with agreed-upon methods and goals” (Stith, 2022). This quote shows how martial arts practice, at its core requires community. Monastic orders historically usually exchanged support with the surrounding areas. One such example would be Benedictine and Augustinian monks establishing hospitals to provide care of many kinds to the wider region (Gilchrist, 2020). Monastic traditions also center communal living in their day-to-day practice (Gilchrist, 2020) and could not exist beyond a single iteration without intergenerational knowledge and learning. This emphasis on community within martial arts and monasteries in the real world shows how flawed the D&D portrayal of an individualistic monk obsessed with personal perfection is.

Another questionable piece of representation is the portrayal of entire cultural, religious, and spiritual practices as supernatural, magical, or psionic. To distill a lifetime of cultural practice into spendable magic points that can be gained by slaying enough monsters is extraordinarily othering. 

The fact that D&D monks often fight unarmed and always fight unarmored is not reflective of historical martial arts practice or real monks. These practices are so diverse as to be practically indescribable in this paper but included weapons and armor of many types. The lawful alignment restriction or recommendation does reflect the need to be somewhat rule-following within a communal living environment like a monastery but cannot accurately reflect the entire cultures shoehorned into the monk class. 

DISCUSSION

Gygax’s distinctly Orientalist attitude in Oriental Adventures (Gygax et. al, 1985) is extraordinarily revealing. In an earlier conception of this paper, we wanted to ask what monks were inspired by, but we found it too easily answered upon reading Gygax’s foreword. This allowed us to explore the harder question of how faithful and/or respectful the game’s creators were towards the cultures they so openly proclaimed as inspiration.

“Eastern” martial arts and monks are systematically othered in Dungeons and Dragons through the monk class. This is done both narratively and mechanically across editions. Any “Asian” flavored character is often pigeonholed by the rules into a monk archetype. A Wu — who might otherwise be made by a player as a wizard, warlock, or sorcerer — often becomes a kind of monk, and so too might a Samurai or even Medjay character, despite these archetypes all coming from vastly different places and having vastly different lore about their abilities. The homogenization of non-western arts into one class, forcing archetypes like the Kensai and Wu into the monk platform, also limits the class’s ability to represent western monks accurately. The I.33 manual, depicting actual medieval European monks training in martial arts, is not represented through the lens of the pulp setting or the mechanics of the monk class. This flattening of so many Eastern cultures into one class, when each of the other core 11 classes demonstrates different aspects of Occidental culture, demonstrates the homogenization to which Gallaher wrote in her summary of Said. 

The capitalization on and commodification of people’s beliefs, whether those beliefs are thought to be extinct or not, is an act of violence. When a powerful group steals intellectual property from a culture that is actively being oppressed by the same system that grants it its power, it extends the hegemonic ideal of Orientalism that Said pointed to as so harmful.

FINAL REMARKS

The question for future research becomes: how can we fix it? Is the onus to do so on the players or the authors? We would argue that at least some responsibility to fix the more egregious failures of the system detailed in the representation section falls on the game’s designers. 

The more the monk is othered, the more that inclusion is limited. By not providing the tools to tell a story without “homebrew” or “reskinning,” the authors limit what tables will find such a story acceptable. The special license from the game’s creators to exclude monks from non-Oriental game settings may enable bigotry both at the table and within the story. That limits the ability to tell those stories only to experienced players, unintimidated by design and playtesting, who are playing at tables with DMs and other players who are amenable. These stories must be accessible to all people. 

Further exploration within this field could examine the playable races or species and how they have been historically constructed, asking the question, “Are orcs racist?” Studies could also be performed on players from marginalized backgrounds to see the effects of the othering discussed in this paper as they are played out at the table. Finally, we’d love to see a paper building out characters from different real-world martial arts disciplines by their practitioners, to see what percentage would be monks. A large one, we’d bet.

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WORKS CITED

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