🏳️‍🌈Pride Month- Celebrating Representation in TTRPGs (2024)

I would like to propose a toast to Rufus and Burne, who I consider to be, at least one of, the first queer-coded npcs in published D&D adventures.

Maybe they were just good friends and roommates, like Bert and Ernie!

Um ...

Brandon and Philip in Rope?

Um...

Look, just because Rufus and Burne are both confirmed bachelors, doesn't mean anything!
 

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I am currently building an inclusive and diverse TTRPG collection for my library, and here are some of the products I've come across so far; I have personal experience with several but not all of them:

Thirsty Sword Lesbians - Exactly what it says on the tin. There's a move to tilt your defeated rival's chin up with the tip of your sword. They know what they're doing, is what I'm saying. Powered by the Apocalypse

Girl by Moonlight - I'm not personally familiar with this one, but it came to me highly recommend. Magical Girls struggle against repression and embracing their true selves. Forged in the Dark.

Dream Askew - A game of collaborative worldbuilding about a queer community attempting to build an enclave of support and safety amid the apocalypse. Belonging Outside Belonging.

Monsterhearts 2 - Mentioned upthread, but yeah, it's the classic teenager supernatural school-life-romance as metaphor for puberty in general and the queer youth experience in specific TTRPG. Powered by the Apocalypse.

What other excellent queer games should we celebrate for Pride?
 

So I kid you not. I’m running a long time pirate campaign for gay players. Including me.

It’s exactly how you would expect it to be… It makes One Piece look somber.

Though surprisingly our gay pirates are far more bloodthirsty! One player actually hid a serated knife inside a bread roll to get that all important surprise. It surprised me at least.
That sounds great.

You're not playing Scurvy Buggers, are you? It's pretty clearly Our Flag Means Death (which can also be surprisingly violent at times) with the serial numbers filed off.
 

That sounds great.

You're not playing Scurvy Buggers, are you? It's pretty clearly Our Flag Means Death (which can also be surprisingly violent at times) with the serial numbers filed off.
Ha ha, I’m not no. But that is the best name for a gay pirate game I’ve ever seen 😂

We’re playing Skull and Shackles with WFRP 4e rules.

We have an innocent ships surgeon, a priest of the sea god, a bloodthirsty witch, a dwarven thug, and a seductive bounty hunter.
 

I am currently building an inclusive and diverse TTRPG collection for my library, and here are some of the products I've come across so far; I have personal experience with several but not all of them:

Thirsty Sword Lesbians - Exactly what it says on the tin. There's a move to tilt your defeated rival's chin up with the tip of your sword. They know what they're doing, is what I'm saying. Powered by the Apocalypse

Girl by Moonlight - I'm not personally familiar with this one, but it came to me highly recommend. Magical Girls struggle against repression and embracing their true selves. Forged in the Dark.

Dream Askew - A game of collaborative worldbuilding about a queer community attempting to build an enclave of support and safety amid the apocalypse. Belonging Outside Belonging.

Monsterhearts 2 - Mentioned upthread, but yeah, it's the classic teenager supernatural school-life-romance as metaphor for puberty in general and the queer youth experience in specific TTRPG. Powered by the Apocalypse.

What other excellent queer games should we celebrate for Pride?
I forgot Moonlight on Roseville Beach, which is apparently getting an expansion soon.
 


Thirsty Sword Lesbians - Exactly what it says on the tin. There's a move to tilt your defeated rival's chin up with the tip of your sword. They know what they're doing, is what I'm saying. Powered by the Apocalypse
I honestly thought this was going to be a game about Gaytorade and I can't believe how far off the mark I was. (I'm old and I like dad jokes.)

It is nice to see how some things have changed for the better. I just recently purchased Arkham, a sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu set during the 1920s. The book mentions that while heteronormative relationships were pretty much the norm as far as the public was concerned, it didn't mean homosexual relationships didn't exist even if they often had to be kept out of the public eye. First, in 1994 I don't know if I ever saw an RPG book use the word heteronormative. Second, it's nice to see a game with a "historical" setting acknowledge the existance of LGBTQ individuals. Gay people didn't just spring into existence in 1969, they've been with us forever and they can fit into any game set in our past.
 


I think both (American) LGBTQAI+ culture and D&D strongly have a found family / safe space element to them that is easy to overlap.
There is definitely a huge overlap here, and it's a huge part of the appeal of tabletop role-playing games and queer communities. The internet has simply made it (a) easier to find that found family and (b) experiment with the form in any number of new and interesting ways.

It's worth pointing out my list above is from my purchase list for my Library, which means (a) this only included physically published books that (b) come in hardcover. For every one of those games I found a dozen or so games that a pdf-only or someone's WIP on itch.io that were all still very cool and very queer.
 

Paizo with Pathfinder was also fairly big for more mainstream RPG queer representation with queer characters and queer relationships being fairly prominent in a number of adventure paths and in the storylines for their iconics and even some of their divinities.
 

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