Gen Z and D&D

Intro

[ME/US/U theme fades in]  

Eneida: “Welcome to Me/Us/U.”  

[ME/US/U theme fades out]  

[The Medieval Banquet music fades in]  

Eneida: “And welcome to GenZ and D&D. Today we’re going to talk about Dungeons & Dragons. In a few minutes, Carissa will talk about how D&D has evolved as a storytelling form - from its creation in the 1970’s to now. Hannah discusses the ways in which the game serves as an escape from the pandemic, and interviews her Dungeon Master, Lucas, And later, Eneida – that’s me – will talk about representation and diversity in D&D.   

But first, let’s have a conversation.”   

[music plays, fades out] 

Carissa: I’m Carissa, and I’m here with Eneida and Hannah.  

Eneida: Hello. 

Hannah: Hi! 

Carissa: So, Hannah, how did you get into D&D? 

Hannah: Oh boy… so it all started when I matched with this guy on Tinder! And (laughing) our first game “date” was a game of Among Us, I’m not even gonna lie but this connects—this connects to D&D. So, one day this was probably before we were dating, probably like a month before we were dating, I mentioned to him like, “Oh D&D seems cool. I’ve never really played it, I’ve, like a lot of Youtubers that I’m subscribed to, like they play D&D, and they mention it, but like I never had a chance to really get into it.” So, then he was like, “Oh, I’m currently in like a session right now and I was like, “Oh that’s cool.” And he was like, “I could ask the DM for you to like to play.” And I was like, “I’ve never played before, no, it’s fine! It’s like it’s fine–”and then like a week later I find myself sitting in the middle of a session (laughs) just like watching it like he was like, “Yeah, just like to like just check it out and like see how it is and like see…” and I didn’t understand anything going on. I was there like I was an hour late, I stayed for like 30 minutes and I left because I was super embarrassed… and this was all on Discord. And then… like we made a character, it took us like 2 hours, but he helped me make a character on Google Sheets, which was like a nightmare, but… it happened and then that’s how I sort of got into D&D and ever since… I don’t know, September of 20—no, no, October 2020 I want to say was when I first started, I have been playing in the same campaign of D&D and yeah, it’s been a fun time (laughs). But what about you, Carissa?  

Carrisa: Yeah, so my friend actually recommended me The Adventure Zone, which is a popular D&D podcast, and I didn’t know the McElroy family at the time. They were like pretty popular in the podcast sphere, and I didn’t know anything about D&D. I’d always been kind of interested in it… I never really had like the kind of stereotypes that a lot of people had. You know, it was always something I thought was pretty cool, but I never got the chance to play it. So, I went into this podcast knowing nothing and then I was like, wait, this is really cool and… over that summer it was summer of 2020 when I got into it, which is when the pandemic hit, so I was spending like my whole entire summer, playing Animal Crossing and listening to hours and hours and hours of this podcast, and it made me so interested in Dungeons and Dragons. So… yeah, that’s kind of how I got into it and… I have plans to play this summer hopefully, I’m really excited, I haven’t played before, so yeah, that’s exciting, so… yeah.  

Eneida: That’s exciting.  

Carissa: Yeah  

Hannah: That’s really exciting.   

Carissa: Yeah, what about you, Eneida?  

Eneida: I got into D&D through my cousins, and I thought it was the dorkiest thing ever because they were like…they were doing it over the phone with like other friends in their high school, and I was like that’s so embarrassing for you (laughs) that you’re doing this. This is like the dorkiest thing ever and they were like, “No, it’s literally just like…” and then he stopped, my little cousin Gabriel was like, “Aren’t you a creative writer?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And he was like, “It’s literally collaborative storytelling.” And I was like, “…Oh.” Cause my thoughts were like…all in the you know, the stereotypes of you know old white dudes in the basement of their mom’s house and just being creepy and weird but, it’s actually really fun, and then I got into Critical Role my spring semester of my freshman year at Susquehanna, and it’s literally been my life for the last four years, cause it’s just… It’s just so much fun and it’s just such a really interesting storytelling medium.  

Carissa: Yeah, I think the way I got into it also helped my kind of perception of it too, because…I didn’t really see the kind of nerdy stereotype of like playing these, like, fantasy characters, and like putting on all the voices and everything. I kind of just saw like a casual perspective so I was like, “Oh yeah, it’s just storytelling,” so yeah.  

Hannah: And I’m the… I’m one-hundred percent certain that I’m the only black woman playing in the group with my boyfriend so… it’s like, I mean, that didn’t really hit me until I was really playing. I was like, “I think I’m just playing with a bunch of white guys.” They don’t really make me feel out of place and I think that that in itself shows that D&D has changed sort of… especially now… so, yeah.   

Eneida: Yeah, it’s the opposite for me. Everyone in my D&D campaign is of color, cause we’re all related (laughs).    

Eneida: It’s cool that none of us is the typical D&D player. Like, we’re all minorities.   

Hannah: Yeah, in some way shape or form. Carissa, don’t you talk about that in your segment?  

Carissa: Yeah, let’s get into it!  

[The Medieval Banquet transition music plays]  

[moody music begins]  

CARISSA: When you think of Dungeons and Dragons, you probably imagine a group of friends huddled together in someone’s basement, engrossed in their own fantasy world right?  

[rewind sound effect]  

[music cuts]  

Wait, you don’t know anything about Dungeons and Dragons? Really? Okay, okay let’s roll the tape.  

[cassette tape sound effect]  

[folksy music begins]  

Dungeons and Dragons, shortened to D&D is a tabletop role-playing game where one person assumes the role of the Dungeon Master and the rest create customizable characters for themselves to role play as. The Dungeon Master, or DM, is responsible for creating a story, or campaign, including a setting, loose plot, and other non-playable characters, or NPCs, for the rest of the group to interact with. The game usually takes place in a fantasy setting, hence the name, and typically follows the characters through an action-driven quest. Each player can choose a race for their character, like dwarf, elf, etc. as well as a class, think Rogue, or Wizard.  

There are also other attributes such as Charisma, Stealth, Intelligence, etc. that players decide at the beginning of their campaign. These will guide the outcomes of the players’ decisions. For example, when a dragon pops out and the character chooses to fight it, they’ll roll dice to determine the success of their attack, and factor in their strength modifier. With the right people, DND can be action-packed, hilarious, and even surprisingly emotional as characters bond with each other and go through their campaign.  

[cassette tape sound effect]  

There, now you know.  

Oh you’re back? You got the run down, okay great, let’s get into it then. Were was I, were was I?   

[moody music begins again]  

Oh right, when you think of Dungeons and Dragons, you probably imagine a group of friends huddled together in someone’s basement, engrossed in their own fantasy world right? Now what if I told you that after almost 50 years of the game’s inception, people’s campaigns reach a much wider audience, from podcasts to graphic novels, and even TV shows. And yes, I did say 50 years ago.   

[music plays] 

D&D was created in 1974 by game designers Ernest Gary Gygax and David Arneson. And this actually wasn’t even the first iteration. Three years earlier, Gygax created Chainmail, a game which featured the familiar medieval setting associated with D&D, as well as combat aspects which inspired future tabletop games.  

Like Chainmail, D&D was inspired by wargames, which are a lot like they sound, tactical strategy exercises to help train soldiers. The breakthrough in D&D was that instead of being a nameless solider, players could customize their characters, which added the roleplay aspect.  

[music plays] 

The first edition of D&D was officially produced by Tactical Studies Rules, a company co-founded by Gygax and childhood friend Donald Kaye. Here’s where it gets a little confusing, in 1977, the game split into two different versions, one keeping the roleplay-heavy aspect of the first edition, and the other focusing more on the strict rules of how the game is played. The latter was known as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and the second edition of D&D, published in 1989, fell more in line with this rule-heavy version.  

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons had several manuals that offered guidance, from all the information you could need for the monsters in the game, to a player’s handbook, which features nitty gritty details about the game like spells, stats for character classes, and even the cost of items that players could buy at DM constructed shops.  

Another interesting aspect of the second edition is some censorship to make the game geared more towards younger players. Demons and devils were given different names, and teamwork within players was emphasized more, as opposed to the slightly more every-man-for-himself target of the first edition. The combat system was also changed for the second edition.   

In between the second and third editions of the game, Tactical Studies Rules was acquired by Wizards of the Coast, and for the third edition in 2000, the “basic” version of the game had been abandoned, with Advanced D&D taking the spot of the primary form of the game, and dropping the title “advanced.” This is when the iconic 20-sided die was added, and in fact, this version of the game was centered around the role—pun intended—of the dice. This is familiar to what the game looks like today, where character’s actions and decisions are decided by lucky rolls and factoring in their character’s modifiers.  

[music plays] 

The fourth edition of the game came in 2008, and again expanded the range of customization of characters including new races and classes, as well as updating the combat system, and providing updated and more extensive guidebooks for players. Most notably, all characters were given “powers” which were previously only for magic-users. Now, any character has certain “moves” they can use in various situations.  

5^th edition, the most current version of the game, was published in 2014 and kept basic elements of previous editions, while changing up some features for more interesting gameplay. For example, the concept of “advantage” and “disadvantage” was introduced to aide with circumstantial events. Instead of rolling one d-20, a player would roll 2, and take the higher number when they had “advantage” and the lower when they had “disadvantage.” This gave DMs more creativity in developing stories and gave more realistic outcomes depending on the situation.  

So, internally, the structure of the game has changed over the 50 or so years it has been around. These changes were aimed to complicate stories and offer more creative freedom as the game moved further from its wargame inspiration, and leaned more heavily on the roleplaying and storytelling aspects.   

Let’s unpack that.  

[music fades out] 

[music begins]  

Like I mentioned earlier, D&D evolved from the tradition of wargames, where players controlled whole armies to roleplay battles. As the fantasy elements were added, like magic and mythical creatures, the game drew criticism from Christian conservatives who saw the game as promoting witchcraft.  

Clip: D&D – It’s become popular with children anywhere from grammar school on up. Not so with a lot of adults who think it’s been connected to a number of suicides and murders.  

Known as the “Satanic Panic,” this era also saw claims from psychologists that fantasy roleplaying was causing players mental illness, and some could not distinguish game from reality. There was even an extreme case that gained traction in the news, where a young man attempted suicide and some attributed his declining mental state to his obsession with D&D. Needless to say, the late 70s and early 80s brought a lot of negative media perception of the game.  

Compounded with the stereotypes and perceptions of “nerd culture” at this time, it wasn’t exactly a popular game played in the public. A game that involves some crunching numbers, fantasy characters, and roleplaying? Decidedly not cool. I’d venture a guess that the negative connotations of playing is what shunned most groups to basements and the like. Additionally, the game at this time was predominantly played by white men—why? Because of the lack of representation within the game.   

[ENEIDA cuts in: but more on that later]  

The stories, or campaigns that these groups of friends collaborated on—well, it seems like they were only privately circulated. Despite my best attempts at research to collect data on the contents of these early campaigns, I’ve come up blank for the most part. That seems fair, though, considering early players weren’t tweeting about their latest session or filming for YouTube. Media perceptions from my lifetime—as well as first-hand accounts—portray the game as played between friends in a recurring group, and I think that’s a fair summary of D&D pre-internet.  

The dawn of the Internet age—beginning roughly in the 90s—revolutionized the way we look at a lot of things, and D&D was no exception.   

Each new edition of the game brought new features and players, but the 2010s are where the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons really took off. Like most niche hobbies, the Internet offered the game a platform for an audience, and that combined with the advent of the beloved 5^th edition in 2014, changed the game—again, pun intended—forever.  

[music plays] 

What was an activity deemed nerdy or dangerous, evolved over time to now, when a simple Google search returns numerous articles on how storytellers can find their voice through DMing a D&D game.  

 It’s impossible to talk about Dungeons and Dragons in the 21^st century without acknowledging Critical Role. It’s a show that started in 2015, and featured beloved voice actors from video games and TV shows alike, bringing them together to not only play the game together, but to record to an audience. The show started on YouTube, continuing to the streaming platform Twitch, and inspired dozens of other shows, like The Adventure Zone.   

Having an audience to these stories complicated the process in a few different ways. To start, at what point did the players go from having fun for themselves, and working as an entertainer to put out good content?   

There’s a sense of longevity that comes with the Internet, and of course affects any content that is uploaded to it. If an entertainer is having a bad day and lets it sink into their work, it’ll be obvious to consumers. While neighborhood friends in the 80s didn’t have to think about watching their language, making entertaining choices to complicate stories, or choosing the morally “right” thing to do, players who broadcast their stories now do. Will listeners be deterred if a character they like does something they deem “wrong?” What plotline will make someone most likely to tell their friend about the show? It’s up to debate if this limits creative freedom of players, but in this way, modern D&D is like any other genre of fiction and authors must have a sense of awareness when it comes to their audience.   

Especially in recent years, groups who broadcast their D&D campaigns have come under fire for representation, particularly if the cast of players is made out of the old-fashioned stereotype of D&D players—straight white men. To what extent is it the players’ responsibility to include diversity in their characters, and how do they do it appropriately? Can or should a white player play a character of a different race? Does racism exist in the fantasy worlds they play in? What about homophobia, ableism, or classism? While players may have been aware of this disconnect between themselves and their characters in the past, having an audience heightened this.  

For example, in The Adventure Zone, a popular podcast made by the McElroy family, one of their storylines featured an implied lesbian couple who tragically died together. The brothers were criticized for falling to the “bury your gays” trope, which they were unaware of. This was a learning experience for these straight men, and something that most likely would’ve gone unnoticed if they had simply been playing with each other and not broadcasting their game.  

Another element of the game that having an audience affects is the story itself. As a fandom grows, fan theories and expectations abound. What happens when a clever plot twist is predicted, or the DM takes the story in a way that fans didn’t want? On the other hand, though, there’s plenty of room for inspiration to be taken from listeners of a show.   

Audience aside though, D&D is a unique genre when it comes to forms of fiction. DMs have a lot of opportunities when it comes to planning their stories, and some choose to have a tighter reign on the plot while some defer more to the other players. That’s like the difference of an author asking their characters what should happen next. And while the game began from a history of battle and warfare style games, there’s a lot of room for character growth and other traditional aspects of fiction. DMs can choose to monologue about a certain setting, creating beautiful prose to describe their world. This might not be strictly necessary to the trajectory of the story, but builds the world in a way that is familiar to readers.  

No matter how you look at it, the introduction of the internet has changed D&D, especially the storytelling process.   

And now let’s go over to Hannah to see how all of this is affected…in a pandemic.  

[music fades out]  

[The Medieval Banquet transition music fades in, fades out] 

Eneida’s character Vari, and her character sheet.

Hannah’s character Kallista, and her character sheet

(string instruments and flute with a medieval sound fade in) 

HANNAH: In the age of computers, wireless phones, televisions, practically any modern day tech, the internet has stood out as one of the most revolutionary ways we communicate and relay information to each other without needing to be right next to each other. Someone can send a photo from Canada and someone in South Africa can view and like the photo. Someone in Brazil can make a game and upload it to a platform like Steam, and someone in the United States can play it. This is all thanks to the internet and the many ways we utilize it, whether that be for watching movies, playing video games, looking up recipes… or for hosting a session of D&D.  

Before I get to that, my name is Hannah, and I want to talk about the pandemic and D&D. Currently, in the year 2021, we have been facing the pandemic for a little over a year now. In-person contact, despite the internet, still remains a crucial way for human beings to socialize. Now, we live in a world where in-person communication is dangerous, unless it’s six feet apart. In order to communicate, many have turned to various online platforms to still feel that sense of connection.  

One of these platforms in particular that I have been using to chat with friends and still socialize is Discord. According to Wikipedia, “Discord is an instant messaging and digital distribution platform designed for creating communities. Users communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called ‘servers.’” And if you don’t know what servers are, they’re, “a collection of persistent chat rooms and voice chat channels.” So, imagine a school, and in the school, there’s a bunch of classrooms and you can choose which classroom to go into to talk to other students. That’s essentially what servers are. 

So, why am I talking about Discord? Besides the fact that this very recent instant messaging service, which was created 2015, has grown and amassed around 300 million registered users in 2020, with 140 million of these users being active monthly in 2021, it has become very popular and a useful tool for D&D players. There. I finally got back to D&D. The point is, D&D is about community and communication, it’s about being able to problem-solve, think on your feet, and work with the other players or against them to achieve a goal. Discord, especially in the case of the campaign I’m currently playing in, is vital to delivering a satisfying and enriching experience. Now, I won’t say it’s easier or better than playing in-person, but it does provide the comfort of what traditional D&D would be like. And for many other reasons, it’s just a better way to play with a variety of players, and in the time we’re living in, it can still offer the level of escapism and community building necessary to make D&D fun.  

In examining both of these factors in relevance to playing online, I interviewed my DM, Lucas or “Bones” as I call him during sessions, just to get more insight from someone who knows a bit more about D&D and has a little more experience with the game. I started off with asking him about how he got into D&D and what led him to becoming a DM. 

LUCAS: Yeah, I think what first got me into D&D…I have this group of friends like three other guys that…I met in middle school, right? We’re like the closest friends in middle school and, you know, I still talk to them now, and one of them actually, did a campaign for us, and we did a bit of D&D in-person. So…that was my first experience with that and my character was awful…but it was fun! How I got to DMing though, I did a…I did another session online. I wasn’t a DM, but I was a player, and it was a lot of fun and it got me thinking, maybe I should try this, maybe I can make my own world. Cause I’m a big…I’m a big fan, I really enjoy character creation, I really enjoy world-building, I might not be the most, you know, creative person on the planet but it seemed fun…it seemed interesting and I wanted to try it on myself. 

HANNAH: He started off in-person, but transitioned to an online space, which happened to be Discord. On Discord, he uses “Tabletop Simulator” in which players can create tabletop games in a multiplayer sandbox world. Basically, a video game to set-up and play board games online. Right before a session starts, all of the available players join the voice channel and he begins to stream the game, which is the equivalent of sharing your screen in zoom. As the players, we are able to see our characters as game pieces and the world aka sets which Lucas and any DM using Tabletop might spend hours creating. In doing D&D online though, he noted one main difference outside of the specifics that come with setting up a game.  

LUCAS: The difference really in-person…In-person feels a lot more interactive, I guess? Like, you’re there, you have like a map in front of you that you all can interact with…you like obviously you know the people a bit more most likely (laughs). But like…it just feels…I don’t know, I guess more interactive? But it’s also…I don’t know, online just feels different. 

HANNAH: Prior to joining Lucas’ campaign, I knew one person beforehand, and that was my boyfriend. Besides him, there was no one else that I had talked to previously or was even friends with. Although you can talk to a wider variety of people online, I think that contributes to what Lucas says about interactivity. It’s harder in-game to do the one thing that arguably drives D&D: player interaction. It’s even more interesting when you have players with different backgrounds and playing styles. He did say however, that it’s also easier to get a word in in-person, especially since the group size for an in-person campaign will likely be smaller. So, so far it seems like more of a hassle to do D&D online if the interactivity can be awkward and if the game can be hard to get into overall. Despite this, I asked Lucas about his experience with escapism and if he could still experience the world in the same way his players do.  

LUCAS: Yeah, well…I would say the way I’m designing my campaign, I’m trying to make different fantasy settings each section, right? My campaign is unique in that it’s not one big world. It’s sort of…every session we ascend to a different leveland it’s sort of a different world and all that, and what I’ve been really trying to do is come up with an interesting setting that players can get interested in for each session. And so it’s a bit harder to like fully capture that because I’m working with like different things each session, but I’m trying my best to sort of make it interesting. And I should say now, I’m also a D&D novice, right? I’ve only been in a few, but, you know, we’re sort of taking it as we go and we’re really just working with, you know, instead of really going exactly by the book, we’re just sort of adapting to what we’re doing. And I should say as a DM, that’s something I’ve had to do a lot, is sort of take what I make and sort of build upon it, like even in session and do a lot of improvisation. So, a lot of trying to get people interested and lost in the world comes with improvisation. Like you don’t know if one of your players is going to randomly talk to an NPC you put in a corner for decoration, they’re gonna talk to them for like thirty minutes straight and you gotta kind of…have something for them to do. 

HANNAH: Adapting to the players is one of the keys to a successful session, and is really where someone has to be flexible enough to allow for the players to interact with the world. So maybe it’s less about how the DM escapes and more about delivering an experience in which their players can escape. But, you still have to do some element of escapism in creating your world and being deeply involved in it so that players can interact and the DM can then react. I mean, someone has to act out NPC roles and know the landscape of the world. I wondered then, if DMing online was met with challenges in trying to deliver this experience to the player, and the key to this according to Lucas, is communication. 

LUCAS: I think a big part of DMing is to communicate with your players and make sure they’re all happy. So, I think what what’s been the challenging thing for me is just making sure everybody is satisfied, communicating with everybody a lot…a large thing with online is scheduling too…because some people are just not going to be able to show up because, you know real life priorities will always come before most of the time for most people. 

HANNAH: As long as his players are happy, then Lucas feels that he’s succeeded in providing them a believable and fun fantasy world for them to explore in. In his words, he says,  

LUCAS: You can make this really complex setting. You can invest a lot of time into making, like the perfect world, and you’re so satisfied with it, but if your players are unhappy, then, you know what’s the point? Like as a DM, your main goal is to keep your players sort of interested, and to make sure everybody is having fun, you’re sort of the leader of this—of this group of people, and if nobody is enjoying it, then, you know, what’s the point? 

HANNAH: And this led me to my next question concerning the pandemic. The reason many are searching for an escape right now, and not only an escape, but a sense of community is due to the lack of both. A sense of socialization, during a time where it’s sacred. Overall, how did the pandemic affect playing and hosting D&D? 

LUCAS: In general, part of the reason we’re able to run D&D and part of the reason why we do run D&D is because of the pandemic. Considering that, you know, a lot of people can’t go out, and even if you played paper D&D, it could be a lot harder too, because some people are stuck inside. I know personally for over a year I’ve been stuck inside my house. I can’t go anywhere, I got family members with pre-existing conditions, you know, I could put them at serious risk, so, you know, having this campaign online and DMing online makes me able to connect with other people and provide this D&D experience for other people…without having to risk the pandemic and risk the safety of the people around me and I, I think, it’s the same for a lot of people where you know, they they’re stuck at home. They don’t have anything to do, and it provides something for, you know, us to do together, and it provides that sort of aspect of social…you know, contact that a lot of people, me included, are like missing right now. 

HANNAH: Many people negate the fact that D&D can form real relationships, and give you a sense of community that other games of a similar fashion can’t really offer. So it might seem like a silly game about fantasy worlds and magic, but it’s so much more than that to so many people, especially during a time where the world is on lockdown and many of us can’t get the social interaction you would get being in person. Spaces like Discord allow for people to form bonds and socialize with people they wouldn’t have otherwise socialized with, people that might be completely different from them and might live thousands of miles away. It’s still valid, just as any in-person relationship might be. Being a DM online is not just about providing a space for escapism, it’s about providing a space for comfort and connection in a fully fleshed-out fantasy world caught in the midst of a painful reality. Lucas even notes this, that D&D has been a source of comfort for him during the pandemic. 

LUCAS: A lot of people are able to sort of…build this group and enjoy the company of others and, you know, again, meet new people through D&D. Personally…I don’t really talk to people in real life as…sad as that is, but having this community online that I’m able to meet up with, like, you know, play a game every day or set up D&D is a, you know, it does wonders for me socially…it’s very enjoyable. And I should say, even you know, even though I met them online, you know some of these people I’ve known for, like over three years. And it’s a way to build like real friendships, even though you can’t leave the house and you can’t actually talk to people. So just having this community online that I’ve known for a couple years now and I’ve been able to build friendships online is just, you know, if I didn’t have that, I don’t know where I’d be right now. 

HANNAH: And in closing, my final question for Lucas was about the influx of people experimenting and joining the D&D space. Not just online, but also in-person in small group gatherings. Just this past year, D&D sales jumped thirty-three percent…adding to a six-year growth streak. Wizards of the Coast, a company that manufactures D&D boards and rulebooks, reported that their overall revenue rose twenty-four percent in 2020, topping eight-hundred, sixteen million dollars. So, it’s clear that more people are joining, and the conversation about D&D is also growing. It’s not just a game for nerdy white men, but a game even I as a black woman can enjoy and be a part of. But with the new influx of players comes gatekeepers, people who believe that D&D shouldn’t be diverse or as open to newer players. There were even people against the idea of having players create characters who use wheelchairs in D&D. So, I asked Lucas, what did he think about people who gatekeep D&D from others due to their identity or due to how they wish to portray themselves in the tabletop game. At the end of the day, Lucas had this to say about what D&D really should be all about. 

LUCAS: D&D as a form of escapism is and as a form of…just a game where everyone can just enjoy themselves and do what they want. There really shouldn’t be any…it should just be something for you to have fun with your friends and do whatever. You know, we’re in a time that’s really stressful for a lot of people, and I think it doesn’t really do any good to hinder the enjoyment of others. Because you know, you’re bothered by…I don’t know just…for me at least, as long as my players are having fun without hindering the enjoyment of others, I’m gonna let them do what they want to do and… Basically, as a DM, I think it’s just important to make sure everyone is having fun and I think anyone should play DND. I think if you’re interested in it you should give it a try. A lot of it is just finding the right group, you know, if you have friends who are interested in it, if you have, you know, if you’re just interested in it, whatever, it’s honestly not as hard as you think. I think you know, as long as everyone is having fun, as long as you make it enjoyable for your players, and if you are interested in it, I say just go out and try it, because D&D is for anybody. 

(string instruments and flute with a medieval sound fades in) 

HANNAH: Even as representation in D&D and the wrong forms of representation are still prevailing topics and very important conversations to have, D&D is and should be for everyone. Eneida will be able to take us deeper into what it means to play D&D despite your identity, belief system, anything that may go against the norms of fantasy. As Lucas says, if you want to play D&D, go for it, find your group, make a character, and dive headfirst into world different from our own. Make decisions, interact with characters, and most of all, have fun. 

(string instruments and flute with a medieval sound fades out) 

[The Medieval Banquet transition music fades in, fades out]

[Forest Walk music fades in]

ENEIDA: My name is Eneida and I wanted to talk with you guys about how GenZ has radically changed the way representation is understood in D&D over the last few years.  

[Forest Walk music plays, fades out]

Carissa mentioned earlier that Dungeons & Dragons has had a bad track record with representation and inclusion over the last 50 years. For a long time, it’s been seen as a cringey roleplaying war game for dorky white dudes – not an inviting image, and certainly not an inclusive one.  

But that is obviously not exclusive to D&D. Fantasy has always been a genre that gatekeeps the kinds of stories it likes to tell. Very white, very straight, very male. I haven’t seen all the Lord of the Rings movies, but I don’t remember there being any people of color. There’s something about a story set in a fantastical world – specifically designed to not look like ours – that makes Hollywood think it gets a free pass on representation and diversity.  

But the lack of ethical representation surrounding Dungeons & Dragons is especially disappointing because of all the things Carissa and Hannah have been talking about. It’s a game meant for complete creative freedom and customization, it should give you the tools to create the kind of world you want to live in.  

But just because it’s designed for you to have complete creative freedom in your fantasy narrative doesn’t mean it’s designed without bias.  

There have been a lot of complaints in recent years surrounding the monk class, a martial arts class directly inspired by some East Asian cultures and stripped of all cultural context and importance. People claim the class and features that go along with it suffer from orientalism – reduced to simple stereotypical aesthetics and tropes.  

And until recently, the official rulebook for D&D said there were certain races that were inclined to certain moral alignments. Meaning, if you’re a drow, a dark-skinned elf, you’re probably evilly aligned – neutral, chaotic, or lawful, it’s still evil. If you were human, of course, you could be whatever you wanted – in older editions, humans were depicted in illustrations as almost exclusively Caucasian. But if you chose to roleplay as a tiefling, the rulebook for D&D said you were just inherently evil. And yes, technically tieflings are people with devilish heritage with horns and fangs, but that’s beside the point – races can’t be evil by nature. That’s problematic, even to entertain in a fantasy setting – especially when there are parallels to real life.  

So when the tools to create these customized stories and worlds are already problematic, you can imagine how many people were roleplaying in fantasy worlds while perpetuating real-world stereotypes. With all these built-in exclusions and biases, no wonder the D&D community was dominated by white men for so long. Those aren’t spaces for people with marginalized identities to feel safe and comfortable enough to have fun and be themselves.  

[The Road Home music plays]

But like all texts and media from decades past, a new generation of creative thinkers has come to reclaim the tools of old and build a better world.  

[The Road Home music plays]

The D&D community is more diverse than ever, surging in popularity with younger queer and POC players because of the one aspect that distinguishes itself from every other platform for fantasy: roleplay.  

And with these newer, younger, more diverse players come fresh perspectives on this 50-year-old tabletop game. GenZ has been changing what roleplay really means in D&D – it’s no longer a tool for going on imaginary quests and adventures, slaughtering evil monstrous races, and saving damsels in distress, now, it’s the perfect platform for self-expression and representation.  

[music fades out]

Hollywood seems to think that because the genre is fantasy, the hero has to be the spitting image of The Every Man. If you could choose to be anyone, why would you want to be yourself? Why would you want to be marginalized? 

But D&D players know that roleplay-based fantasy is the opportunity to be yourself, to explore parts of you that you don’t feel comfortable expressing in your daily life, to just escape the negativity of the outside world in a way that feels authentic to you.  

I mean, think about it.  

You go to a friend’s house to play a session of Dungeons and Dragons with a few of your other friends. In your home campaign, you dictate your own story, have a say in the creation of your own world, craft roles and destinies for yourself not limited to the prejudices of pop culture. Your language is not policed, your identities and existences are not matters of debate.  

This kind of escapism is truly empowering because it’s self-determined. With people you feel safe with. You’re not just reading or watching queer/POC representation, you’re living it. And that can be incredibly powerful, freeing, and healing.  

In 2020, a TTRPG designer named Sara Thompson created a combat wheelchair for people to use in their own home games. It went viral, and the renowned celebrity Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer from Critical Role shed some visibility on Sara’s creation by introducing an NPC named Dagen into the show who used said combat wheelchair. People were ecstatic – this is what D&D is best used for, innovating the official toolset for representation of all kinds. It was lovely to see the disabled D&D community be overjoyed to see someone had created a tool for disabled characters to vanquish a dragon as easily as their companions.  

Also in 2020, a group of black celebrities in the D&D community – including Omega Jones, Tanya DePass, B. Dave Walters, TK Johnson, Aabria Iyengar, and WWE Superstar Ember Moon – decided that while there are plenty of black D&D players around the world, there are not nearly enough portrayed in D&D media. So they created their own livestream called #BlackAF where they could have a safe space to speak openly about current events and their unfiltered experiences being a part of the D&D community. Let’s listen to what Aabria Iyengar had to say about being black in geek culture:  

AABRIA IYENGAR: “Let’s talk about the acceptability politics of being black in this space. Like, yes, we deal with this every day, walking out in the world. B. Dave and I were in a conversation earlier where we were talking about, like – B. Dave is tall, I’m extremely tall. I grew up in Orange County where I was one of the few black people wherever I was and physically intimidating walking down the street. And part of that carries over into our nerd community too, a group that has a strange self-definition of being victimized over time because of our hobbies and things that we like. Imagine, like, the compounding, doubly so, of being black and nerdy, of being a geek about things that stereotypes would say we aren’t interested in because we’re supposed to be into, like, rap and sports. We can be into a wealth of things, everyone contains universes. But, uh, I want to point out that, like, the things that we’re dealing with right now also carry into the community that we’re a part of. [original audio glitches] That’s you, here, now. So I wanna ask that you, like, inspect the way in which you interact with geeks of color in your community, because one. we are raw right now, nerves are frayed and exhaustion is real. And not just asking for empathy but also examine yourself and see the ways in which you might be microagressing and adding to the burden of being black people in this space right now, ‘cause it’s rough.”

ENEIDA: They had to talk about these issues in the community because they were relevant to so many black players. It was a huge deal and it was wonderful to watch. 

I mean, go to the Critical Role tag on tumblr and you’ll see mostly women and LGBTQ+ fans creating content and talking about their own experiences with D&D.  

And while Dungeons and Dragons is an incredible tool to create one’s own representation in fantasy, it’s also the perfect platform to explore other parts of yourself you may not be able to in your daily life.  

I have a few online friends that I’ve made through that Critical Role community on tumblr that have found solace and joy in exploring their queerness and gender identities in a roleplaying game where they cannot in their daily lives.  

In my home game with my sister and cousins, our characters speak like we do, like young Puerto Rican kids from Harrisburg, Spanglish and everything. And while it’s been so much fun roleplaying with people I love while being myself, it’s been invaluable having a safe space to be adventurous with my personal characters.  

I grew up in a very religious home, so, naturally, I wanted to play a cleric for my first real D&D experience (clerics are healers that serve gods and goddesses). And it’s been such an experience roleplaying as a religious character who is not traumatized by her faith, but who finds it freeing and fulfilling. Vari – that’s her name – actually serves the Raven Queen, the goddess of death and the afterlife, who’s pretty chill and doesn’t paint the afterlife as some kind of punishment, but a transition, a journey to some other way of living – regardless of who you are. That’s been really important to me.  

All this to say – I’m a Puerto Rican woman who plays Dungeons & Dragons with her Puerto Rican sister and cousins, playing however we like. The game doesn’t belong to white men anymore. 

[Medieval Loop One music fades in]

And unfortunately, as you could probably guess, some people are pretty mad about that.  

[Medieval Loop One music] plays, fades out]

The combat wheelchair I mentioned did receive a lot of praise and visibility, but it also received some inevitable criticism. People claimed that it wasn’t realistic to give characters in wheelchairs an equitable role in a fantasy setting, that there’s no way a wheelchair user could realistically fight a dragon. It just didn’t make any sense. To which I would reply: There is no realistic way to fight a dragon. Dragons aren’t real. None of D&D is, that’s the point.  

Older generations of D&D players are especially concerned that newer generations are reclaiming and reinventing the imagery of their beloved tabletop game.  

Those tieflings I mentioned earlier? People of an infernal legacy – horns, fangs, spaded tails, glowing eyes, literal devil people – have now been widely understood in younger circles as queer. There’s this ongoing meme that if you’re drawn to tiefling characters, you’re probably queer.  

Tieflings are coded in the official rulebook as minorities. The website D&D Beyond says:

CARISSA: “People tend to be suspicious of tieflings, assuming that their infernal heritage has left its mark on their personality and morality, not just their appearance… The reality, though, is that a tiefling’s bloodline doesn’t affect his or her personality to any degree. Years of dealing with mistrust does leave its mark on most tieflings, and they respond to it in different ways. Some choose to live up to the wicked stereotype, but others are virtuous. Most are simply very aware of how people respond to them. After dealing with this mistrust throughout youth, a tiefling often develops the ability to overcome prejudice through charm or intimidation.”  

ENEIDA: This kind of prejudice resulted from being visibly Other is relatable to a lot of minority players, especially LGBTQ+ folks, and so those communities are drawn to the tiefling to roleplay out those minority experiences and subvert a lot of stereotypes. The hellish/devil imagery used as weapons against queer communities are being reclaimed and celebrated. They might be Other, different from everyone else, but that makes them cooler, not evil.  

Remember that cleric character of mine I mentioned? She’s also a tiefling. It might seem inconsequential, but to have a person of devilish heritage be so closely connected to the divine is a new and powerful kind of image – one that could only be crafted in a game like Dungeons & Dragons.  

D&D is becoming more and more of a platform for metaphorical empowerment. You can talk to death. You can have a gay character be a celestial being like an aasimar (those are angels). You can overthrow corrupt governments with your friends.  

If anyone watches Dimension 20, a D&D show put out by College Humor, you might know what I’m talking about. Every season, their villains are representative of different immoral aspects of Western society. One time, they defeated the literal embodiment of white supremacist capitalism. Another time, they dismantled the corrupt religious institution that was waging war and oppression across the continent.  

Dungeons & Dragons is no longer just a game for white men to use the genre of fantasy to reinforce their own supremacy. Instead, the fantastical elements are being used as tools for more compelling storytelling, personal empowerment, and having pure inclusive and inviting fun.

[Forest Walk music fades in]

That’s what fantasy is supposed to be. And D&D especially has always been the perfect tool to create your own representation, it just had to be taken from the white men who used to dominate and gatekeep the community, and shared amongst the people who needed representation.  

Instead, it’s a game for everyone.  

[Forest Walk music plays, fades out]

---

---

---

---

“Instead, it’s a game for everyone.”