D&D General I’m Trying to Love D&D Again—and I’ve Got Some Complaints. Young Grognard posting.

[AlViking]

There has always been a strong overlap between the Pride Club and D&D Club at my school. I suspect at quite a few schools. Not that all or most of the kids in D&D Club are LGBTQ+, but quite a lot of them are outsiders for a variety of reasons, and I suspect what draws them to the game is the opportunity to interact in a fantsy world where they aren't feeling ostracized and judged.

Well, that and the fact that I actively seek out the kids I see sitting by themselves all the time and encourage them to give the club a try.

Point is, wanting to feel safe and valued for who you are isn't an agenda. It's a basic human need. It's down near the bottom of Mazlowe's hierarchy of needs, in fact. But that doesn't mean kids are coming to the game to argue politics or something. They just want to play D&D and participate in a story of fantastical adventure, just like everyone else who loves the game. All they ask is to not be bugged about using they/them pronouns, or whatever, while doing so. Is that really a big ask?

For the most part, this hobby has always appealed to those of us who didn't fit in because we weren't fitting exactly into society's perfect little boxes. We're all on the same team. We're each other's people. Even if we sometimes like to argue about stuff on a forum. So we gotta support each other. Nerds should be the first to extend friendship and empathy to our fellow travellers.

I think your experience with diversity is pretty widespread. I've been active with public gaming off and on for a long time, and in the vast majority of groups people from all walks of life are openly accepted. So much so that I still remember when a guy had an issue with the mention that there was a lesbian couple - back when we were playing Living Greyhawk in the 3e era. He was quite upset that such a thing as being gay was casually mentioned, which was odd since more than one person in the extended group did nothing to hide their preferences that he apparently thought were not family friendly.

I'm glad that other than that one exception gaming groups are an open environment where people are free to be themselves. We're all just there to play a game and, hopefully, a friend or two along the way.

 

[GrimCo]

I can't imagine any other hobby where "don't expect me to care about who you are" works well for anyone

Well, convention play and organized play with strangers is something like that. You can have perfectly good and fun game without knowing anything about other people you play, including their real name.

Playing online with strangers is similar. You don't need to care about who they are outside of the game or what they are going trough. You have common goal - play game and relax, escape from real life for a few hours. So long as everyone is courteous to each other and primary focus is on the game at hand, that can lead to pretty good game.

 

[bedir than]

Well, convention play and organized play with strangers is something like that. You can have perfectly good and fun game without knowing anything about other people you play, including their real name.

Playing online with strangers is similar. You don't need to care about who they are outside of the game or what they are going trough. You have common goal - play game and relax, escape from real life for a few hours. So long as everyone is courteous to each other and primary focus is on the game at hand, that can lead to pretty good game.

I assure you that you find out something about that person through how they play.
Even "So long as everyone is courteous" requires knowing something - usually a label about them (pronoun and name).

 

[billd91]

Well, convention play and organized play with strangers is something like that. You can have perfectly good and fun game without knowing anything about other people you play, including their real name.

Playing online with strangers is similar. You don't need to care about who they are outside of the game or what they are going trough. You have common goal - play game and relax, escape from real life for a few hours. So long as everyone is courteous to each other and primary focus is on the game at hand, that can lead to pretty good game.

Indeed. But even in those cases, you may notice and recognize some traits that you should be expected to respect. And those traits may be attached to baggage and social issues away from the table. As part of that expectation of courtesy, you may need to watch how you step around those issues and follow that other player's lead.

 

[The Firebird]

As was already discussed earlier in the thread, if I think being asked for basic courtesies like using someone's correct name or pronouns is an imposition on my game time, I'm the problem. If I have no issue with including tropes like political marriages or captured princesses in my game but balk at a couple of gay NPCs being portrayed/featured in plot in the exact same way as straight ones, I'm the person bringing real life problems (prejudice) into the game.

This was not how I read @Lanefan's post. Ime, I have not encountered people who have an issue with gay NPCs or pronouns. But I have encountered people who want to make every game into a political revolution of their chosen variety. That's what I hear when I read "contaminate the fiction with their real-world agendas".

I've been active with public gaming off and on for a long time, and in the vast majority of groups people from all walks of life are openly accepted. So much so that I still remember when a guy had an issue with the mention that there was a lesbian couple - back when we were playing Living Greyhawk in the 3e era.

I've not encountered this...I think ever, in my experience with public gaming. It could be a function of my age or geography. The typical game stores I attend, including regular (and former regular) ones on the West Coast, the South, and the Midwest are explicitly LGBTQ+ friendly. I don't mean that to say no one encounters issues, and you don't have to look far online to find people in gaming who are not accepting. But I think experiences vary and that affects how people read things.

 

[Mannahnin]

This was not how I read @Lanefan's post. Ime, I have not encountered people who have an issue with gay NPCs or pronouns. But I have encountered people who want to make every game into a political revolution of their chosen variety. That's what I hear when I read "contaminate the fiction with their real-world agendas".

For my part I've played with a bunch of queer and progressive folk, and I've never encountered anyone trying to "make every game into a political revolution of their chosen variety". The closest I ever came was one of my players (who has no love for monarchs) wanting to take down Prince Stephen Amber after the party rescued him as the conclusion of module X2. But that was mostly some good-natured joking and amusing banter about where he'd like to see the game go next if we had continued the campaign.

I would be surprised if Lanefan had an issue with people's pronouns, but we're talking in a greater context kicked off by the remarks in the OP.

In which people labeling their groups/tables as LGBTQ+ Friendly provoked a negative reaction, betraying a depressingly common lack of self-awareness where ignorant folks react to inclusivity as some kind of alien "political" intrusion into game space.

 

[Alzrius]

Ime, I have not encountered people who have an issue with gay NPCs or pronouns. But I have encountered people who want to make every game into a political revolution of their chosen variety. That's what I hear when I read "contaminate the fiction with their real-world agendas".

While I wouldn't go so far as to characterize them as a "political revolution," I have met people who explicitly bring commentary on contemporary social issues into a pastime that's understood as being escapist fantasy, which seems to be the crux of the issue. For some people, the "escapist" part means that those issues simply aren't present in the first place, whereas other seems to define it to mean that those issues are framed/handled in the way that they wished instead of the way they all too often are.

Both of those are understandable, but don't have much overlap.

 

[Mannahnin]

While I wouldn't go so far as to characterize them as a "political revolution," I have met people who explicitly bring commentary on contemporary social issues into a pastime that's understood as being escapist fantasy, which seems to be the crux of the issue. For some people, the "escapist" part means that those issues simply aren't present in the first place, whereas other seems to define it to mean that those issues are framed/handled in the way that they wished instead of the way they all too often are.

Both of those are understandable, but don't have much overlap.

There are at least three ways to handle various social issues, aren't there? Talking about prejudice and discrimination of various sorts, or other evils like slavery.

• Leave them out entirely.
• Give them an idealized resolution (all the slavers or bigots are explicitly bad guys and villains)
• Import them largely untouched from our own history or fiction inspired by our history, unexamined.

Some people's preference in escapism is to leave out, say, prejudice and bigotry entirely. Others seem to prefer to keep them, and portray omitting them as some form of political intrusion. Others might enjoy the use of fiction as allegory or using these tropes for dramatic juice, fighting some of the same fights we face in the real world, in an imaginary space.

I think any of the three approaches are fine and can work for different groups, and it's probably best via Session 0, or other communication tools like Lines & Veils, or other more organic conversations, to have a group on the same page about how and whether such issues will be handled and present in game.

 

[Clint_L]

I would be surprised if Lanefan had an issue with people's pronouns, but we're talking in a greater context kicked off by the remarks in the OP.

I've had Lanefan and some of his group to my house for a game of Dread. Lovely people, tremendous fun to game with. I recommend! Definitely no issues with my spouse's pronoun's (they/them), and I definitely think you are misreading Lanefan if you think he is expressing intolerance. In any way. That seems like the opposite of who he is.

 

[Mannahnin]

I've had Lanefan and some of his group to my house for a game of Dread. Lovely people, tremendous fun to game with. I recommend! Definitely no issues with my spouse's pronoun's (they/them), and I definitely think you are misreading Lanefan if you think he is expressing intolerance. In any way. That seems like the opposite of who he is.

Delightful to hear, and I absolutely did not. My impression was rather that he was getting slightly blinkered and forgetting the larger context of the discussion.