Story By Liz Johnson
Graphics By Amelia Locklear
The world of Dungeons & Dragons is a world of quests and adventures, of spells and enchantments, of secrets and forgotten societies. It’s a world populated by snarling orcs and graceful elves, dark magic and ancient gods. Everything hinges on the roll of the dice and player instincts. In this classic high fantasy game, anything can happen.
It was this sense of possibility that drew Charlotte resident Dustin Duong to Dungeons & Dragons. The UNC-Chapel Hill student enjoys the collaborative nature of the game and the opportunity to challenge the imagination.
But he rarely sees his own Cambodian culture represented in the game.
In place of the racially stereotyped Dungeons & Dragons landscape, Duong is building a new world from the ground up, inspired by Southeast Asian history and culture.
Growing up in Charlotte, Duong sometimes felt disconnected from his Cambodian culture—caught in the middle between his parents’ traditions and his own American upbringing.
But lately, he’s been reconnecting with this heritage, and the world he’s creating is a direct result of that.
He’s keeping the mechanics and rules his players are familiar with and turning the setting and storytelling into something entirely his own.
After all, the very nature of the game is rooted in experimentation and creativity. Why not take that one step further to create a world he can really connect with?
As a kid, Duong had big dreams of writing novels, plus a penchant for correcting people’s grammar. By 12, he was weaving together collaborative fantasy narratives with his friends via Skype.
By the time he got to UNC-CH, Duong’s storytelling took the form of photography. When the sun shone, he’d cross campus with Nikons slung across each shoulder. When it rained, he’d blanket the cameras in plastic bags and keep going.
Duong’s sophomore spring semester was interrupted by the pandemic, and he returned to his parents’ home in Charlotte. He set down his camera and looked for other ways to satisfy his natural curiosity. Now, for the time being, Duong has redirected his love of storytelling to a fictional but no less powerful media.
For the past year and a half, Duong has written lore, drawn maps and created characters set in the Dungeons & Dragons game system.
D&D has received criticism in the past for modeling its fantasy races after real cultures in problematic ways. For example, elves, a highly esteemed fantasy race with desirable characteristics, are stereotypically European in their physical features and culture. But other races such as orcs or dark elves (which are evil) appear rooted in distinctly non-European cultures.
When he first stepped into the role of Dungeon Master, Duong made sure to avoid broad racial stereotypes, focusing instead on developing nuanced cultures and characters within the world.
But no matter how much care he took to create an inclusive realm, sometimes it just didn’t feel like enough.
After all, there’s a certain responsibility that comes with storytelling that draws so heavily from the real world.
“Everyone talks about fantasy as an escape,” Duong said. “But to me, it’s not a total escape, because I think all the best sci-fi and fantasy is saying something about our world.”
Duong’s new world is a high fantasy story set in the destroyed remains of a technological dystopia. From flora and fauna to spiritual symbols, Duong has thought out each lore decision, hoping to create as nuanced and inclusive a world as possible.
The most drastic shift in the new world? He eliminated fantasy races entirely, making all the characters human.
Ultimately, Duong sees it this way: the genre’s traditional tropes (fantasy races included) are a blueprint of sorts. By moving away from this safety net, he hopes to open a new world of creative potential, unbound by genre and game expectations.
Allison Ruvidich, who joined the game in April 2021, is just as interested in pushing the boundaries of the game.
For Ruvidich, fantasy is inherently about metaphor. But when it comes to fantasy races, it’s not always clear what that metaphor is.
“Are we using them as a metaphor for culture? Are we using them as a metaphor for race? Are we using them as a metaphor for ethnicity?” she said. “If we remove the metaphor, then we’re going to know what we’re talking about, and we can make sure we mean what we’re saying.”
In August 2020, Duong posted on his Instagram an open invitation to a Discord server dubbed The Traveler’s Tabletop, dedicated to text-based role-playing games, or RPGs—primarily Dungeons & Dragons. The server has since grown to about 50 members.
Most commonly played in person, with each player speaking aloud their parts, Duong’s D&D community is almost entirely text-based, building the story by chat and rolling virtual dice in channels on a Discord server.
Each game exists in its own group chat on the server, where participants (averaging 3-5 per game) play a handcrafted character and work together to tell a story, making it up as they go.
Though some of the players are more used to in-person D&D than text-based, it’s hard not to be drawn in by Duong’s storytelling abilities.
“Duong can craft words in a way that I have never experienced before,” said player Alex Woods. “He knows how to use language in ways that are beautiful and evocative.”
From the start, the Traveler’s Tabletop has been more than just a home for the stories Duong and the players have spent the past months creating. It’s also become a community for the players, who have built friendships within and without the fantasy realm.
Winn Foreman, a Duke alum who joined in 2020, has long loved the community of Dungeons & Dragons. When COVID made in-person games temporarily impossible, the Traveler’s Tabletop filled a much-needed role.
“There was nothing to scratch that itch of community and shared storytelling,” Foreman said. “Finding this place for that to happen has really done a lot for me.”
Almost every night, players spend hours playing video games, telling each other about their days, doing homework in a comfortable silence that stretches from California to Canada to North Carolina.
As Duong learns more about his culture, he shares this knowledge with the community he’s built, encouraging his friends to ask similar questions of their own interests and characters.
He’s dedicated a channel in the Discord server to explaining his world-building decisions, providing reference photos and Wikipedia links of his inspiration: an article about ancient Khmer archery, photographs of intricate dance masks, lush green Cambodian landscapes.
In the fantasy world he’s created, it’s tradition to wear bracelets made of wires thought to be created by godly beings. This bracelet is inspired by the simple string bracelets Duong has worn for as long as he can remember.
Woven from string blessed at a temple in Charlotte, this bracelet is a traditional Buddhist symbol of protection and peace, to be worn until it fades with age and falls off naturally. Then, another blessed bracelet takes its place, and the tradition continues.
In this way, Duong celebrates centuries-old Cambodian traditions, immortalizing the real within the fantastic.
