I love it when someone has already written the blog post I wanted to write, so I don’t have to. And I love it even more when that person is John Scalzi. He wrote this fabulous and well-quoted piece on how to understand privilege by viewing it through the lens of computer games.

I was going to write about D&D and modifiers to base stats, but the basic point stands.

As well as what he said, it’s also worth noting that other attributes that affect your game’s difficulty setting are:

• Cis/trans-gender
• Able-bodied/disabled
• Married/divorced parents
• Wealthy/poor parents
• Good/bad school

And if we look one level deeper at these attributes and the ones Scalzi highlights, these attributes form groups: if you have poor parents you’re more likely to go to a bad school; some demographics have a higher rate of single parents. And of course, these things stack across generations: odds are you’ve inherited your parents’ difficulty setting.

On the privilege issue, this was published in June, and is a very interesting read on potential issues with using the word privilege.

But yes, John Scalzi rules. Read his blog.