Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
Please note that this is a "Plus" (+) thread, and is meant to be Positive. (Source) If you don't have something productive to say, please don't say it.
In addition, there will be references to games mature subject matter in this post. While it is not explicit, it is present.
So June is LGBTQI+ month* in the United States (aka Pride Month), and I wanted to make a post celebrating that Pride in the TTRPG sphere by posting a little bit of history related to representation in TTRPGs. Finally, I hoped that people could use the comments to discuss some of the amazing contributors to the hobby we have had over the years, or any other positive things in light of the month.
*That's the official proclamation.
1. The Early Years- From the 70s through the Aughts.
The early years of TTRPGs have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, of being an unwelcoming space for those who did not fit in- whether due to gender, skin color, or (as befits this essay) queer and LGBT+ issues. That standard surface view, reinforced by some retrogressive attitudes today as well as stories about games like FATAL, isn't a completely accurate portrayal of what was really going on.
(Note, I will be using "queer" as an inclusive term from this point on.)
The earliest years of TTRPGs, before the "Egbert explosion," were dominated by college-age and older individuals. As such, there was a much more mature style of gameplay. This doesn't necessarily translate to open in the way we think of today- after all, this was almost 50 years ago. While there aren't a lot of contemporaneous accounts, we can see the hints of it, especially as younger players began to flood in starting in 1979. Dragon 36 recounts the experience of one DM at a convention being flustered when running a dungeon for a group with mixes ages that had prostitutes (of both genders) that were offering their wares to the party. Earlier, there had been articles discussing how TTRPGs were useful ways to explore psychological aspects of the character you are playing, and in so doing, perhaps gain greater insight into yourself.
Given the mature nature of the market, it is unsurprising that we can see that sexuality was part of the hobby from the beginning. In 1975, Greg Costikyan had made a system for sex in D&D, and it contained affiliations for heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, transexual, or "extraordinary" (with fetishes) for characters. (All terminology in original). This being the era of dicing and tables, it had rules for generating a "sex drive" attribute, with admonitions that a Paladin's sex drive could not be higher than 14. Further explanation would run afoul of the board's rules. (Source- The Elusive Shift, A&E 12). Further, while I hesitate to mention it because of other ... more recent issues, it was also the case the Tekumel explicitly referenced a non-heteronormative relationship.
Arguably, the 1980s changed this approach, at least in America; I would say that the combination of overall culture (the "Reagan 80s" and the moral panic over HIV), the massive influx of young players starting in 1979 to the point where pre-teens and teens were buying the majority of TSR's products, and the Satanic Panic combined to make overt sexuality a much more fraught topic for TTRPGs. The changes in the rules, the art, and even in material around it (such as Dragon Magazine) in the 80s made for a game that in the published materials, would either present a chaste (if violent) look, or a heteronormative "teen-safe" approach, with manly men and scantily-clad (but clad) women. This greatly increased over time, as evidenced by the changing art styles from the 70s and early 80s onwards. By 1984, TSR codified this as follows: “Rape and graphic lust should never be portrayed or discussed. Sexual activity is not to be portrayed. Sexual perversion and sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.” ...While the last sentence is undefined, I don't think it takes much creativity to understand what it is referring to.
But ... the remnants of transgression remained for players, even younger players, to explore. D&D (and other RPGs) let you play different characters- for that reason, it was possible for people to play characters that were different genders or do different things than they "should" do, without being called out on it. And the lack of social mechanics could also allow for some more free-form roleplaying in social situations within the game. Finally, there remained elements of the fantastic- such as Corellon Larethian (male or female, both or neither), that provided inspiration for queer players. This goes to what was a benefit of having "fluff" take such a large part of the game when it came to social cues; simply put, you could not have crunch mechanics for these issues at that time, and the nebulous boundaries within all the fluff provided a safe space for some queer players to explore issues. In what was otherwise a difficult time for many queer youth, D&D and other RPGs provided some amount of respite.
However ... only some amount of respite. I do not want to leave a false impression of what was a hobby that was male-dominated and catered to a certain fanbase. While we laugh and mock it now, a game like FATAL did not arise in a vacuum; while it has a questionable sample size, Fine's book Shared Fantasy indicates that among all-male groups in the late 70s, there was widespread sexual assault of female NPCs within games. Publishers, such as Task Force Games in the late 80s and beginning of the 90s, would write that expressions of queer sexuality were a perversion and using roleplaying materials to explore it would cause people to "ultimately be held accountable for their actions."
Over time, as we moved from the 80s to the 90s, what was implicit became more explicit. Games, from Vampire: the Masquerade to various cyberpunk games, began to market themselves as edgy or (to use the 90s term) "extreme" compared to the vanilla D&D counterpart. There was also the beginning of fan-published content on the internet; as it was the internet, sex was involved.
2. Why System Matters to Queer Representation.
The turnover from the the 90s into the 00s saw an explosion in games that had explicit references to sex, or, more importantly, queer representation. While it was the case that you might (if you were lucky) have positive representations of queer characters in materials by certain publishers (e.g., Steve Jackson Games and Green Ronin), increasingly we began to see games with mechanics that allowed for romance, and queer romance.
As an aside, I am not always a big fan of "system matters," but it is inarguable to me that having express mechanics for certain types of interaction, and romance, necessarily increases that type of representation. And the rise of indie games, such as Blue Rose (2005) and the troika of games by Emily Care Boss starting in 2005 (Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, Under My Skin) show that the expression of these issues in mechanics was important for many people.
Eventually, this leads to games like Monsterhearts (2012), where players are put in a position of exploring romantic issues without the preconception of heteronormativity- as some have put it, an evolution from mechanics that are explicitly inclusive of queer romance, to mechanics that are queering.
At this time, then, issues of visibility and queer representation are at the best point within the hobby that they have ever been in history. The largest mainstream publisher, WoTC, explicitly acknowledges queer characters within its texts, and Jeremy Crawford (lead designer) is openly gay. There are indie publishers and numerous, numerous games you can get:
Obviously, not everything is perfect. But the continuing growth of the hobby, and the growth of the explicit inclusivity of the hobby, has been amazing to watch. It is something everyone should all feel proud of, even while acknowledging more work needs to be done.
So, what do you want to discuss this Pride Month?
In addition, there will be references to games mature subject matter in this post. While it is not explicit, it is present.
So June is LGBTQI+ month* in the United States (aka Pride Month), and I wanted to make a post celebrating that Pride in the TTRPG sphere by posting a little bit of history related to representation in TTRPGs. Finally, I hoped that people could use the comments to discuss some of the amazing contributors to the hobby we have had over the years, or any other positive things in light of the month.
*That's the official proclamation.
1. The Early Years- From the 70s through the Aughts.
The early years of TTRPGs have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, of being an unwelcoming space for those who did not fit in- whether due to gender, skin color, or (as befits this essay) queer and LGBT+ issues. That standard surface view, reinforced by some retrogressive attitudes today as well as stories about games like FATAL, isn't a completely accurate portrayal of what was really going on.
(Note, I will be using "queer" as an inclusive term from this point on.)
The earliest years of TTRPGs, before the "Egbert explosion," were dominated by college-age and older individuals. As such, there was a much more mature style of gameplay. This doesn't necessarily translate to open in the way we think of today- after all, this was almost 50 years ago. While there aren't a lot of contemporaneous accounts, we can see the hints of it, especially as younger players began to flood in starting in 1979. Dragon 36 recounts the experience of one DM at a convention being flustered when running a dungeon for a group with mixes ages that had prostitutes (of both genders) that were offering their wares to the party. Earlier, there had been articles discussing how TTRPGs were useful ways to explore psychological aspects of the character you are playing, and in so doing, perhaps gain greater insight into yourself.
Given the mature nature of the market, it is unsurprising that we can see that sexuality was part of the hobby from the beginning. In 1975, Greg Costikyan had made a system for sex in D&D, and it contained affiliations for heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, transexual, or "extraordinary" (with fetishes) for characters. (All terminology in original). This being the era of dicing and tables, it had rules for generating a "sex drive" attribute, with admonitions that a Paladin's sex drive could not be higher than 14. Further explanation would run afoul of the board's rules. (Source- The Elusive Shift, A&E 12). Further, while I hesitate to mention it because of other ... more recent issues, it was also the case the Tekumel explicitly referenced a non-heteronormative relationship.
Arguably, the 1980s changed this approach, at least in America; I would say that the combination of overall culture (the "Reagan 80s" and the moral panic over HIV), the massive influx of young players starting in 1979 to the point where pre-teens and teens were buying the majority of TSR's products, and the Satanic Panic combined to make overt sexuality a much more fraught topic for TTRPGs. The changes in the rules, the art, and even in material around it (such as Dragon Magazine) in the 80s made for a game that in the published materials, would either present a chaste (if violent) look, or a heteronormative "teen-safe" approach, with manly men and scantily-clad (but clad) women. This greatly increased over time, as evidenced by the changing art styles from the 70s and early 80s onwards. By 1984, TSR codified this as follows: “Rape and graphic lust should never be portrayed or discussed. Sexual activity is not to be portrayed. Sexual perversion and sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.” ...While the last sentence is undefined, I don't think it takes much creativity to understand what it is referring to.
But ... the remnants of transgression remained for players, even younger players, to explore. D&D (and other RPGs) let you play different characters- for that reason, it was possible for people to play characters that were different genders or do different things than they "should" do, without being called out on it. And the lack of social mechanics could also allow for some more free-form roleplaying in social situations within the game. Finally, there remained elements of the fantastic- such as Corellon Larethian (male or female, both or neither), that provided inspiration for queer players. This goes to what was a benefit of having "fluff" take such a large part of the game when it came to social cues; simply put, you could not have crunch mechanics for these issues at that time, and the nebulous boundaries within all the fluff provided a safe space for some queer players to explore issues. In what was otherwise a difficult time for many queer youth, D&D and other RPGs provided some amount of respite.
However ... only some amount of respite. I do not want to leave a false impression of what was a hobby that was male-dominated and catered to a certain fanbase. While we laugh and mock it now, a game like FATAL did not arise in a vacuum; while it has a questionable sample size, Fine's book Shared Fantasy indicates that among all-male groups in the late 70s, there was widespread sexual assault of female NPCs within games. Publishers, such as Task Force Games in the late 80s and beginning of the 90s, would write that expressions of queer sexuality were a perversion and using roleplaying materials to explore it would cause people to "ultimately be held accountable for their actions."
Over time, as we moved from the 80s to the 90s, what was implicit became more explicit. Games, from Vampire: the Masquerade to various cyberpunk games, began to market themselves as edgy or (to use the 90s term) "extreme" compared to the vanilla D&D counterpart. There was also the beginning of fan-published content on the internet; as it was the internet, sex was involved.
2. Why System Matters to Queer Representation.
The turnover from the the 90s into the 00s saw an explosion in games that had explicit references to sex, or, more importantly, queer representation. While it was the case that you might (if you were lucky) have positive representations of queer characters in materials by certain publishers (e.g., Steve Jackson Games and Green Ronin), increasingly we began to see games with mechanics that allowed for romance, and queer romance.
As an aside, I am not always a big fan of "system matters," but it is inarguable to me that having express mechanics for certain types of interaction, and romance, necessarily increases that type of representation. And the rise of indie games, such as Blue Rose (2005) and the troika of games by Emily Care Boss starting in 2005 (Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, Under My Skin) show that the expression of these issues in mechanics was important for many people.
Eventually, this leads to games like Monsterhearts (2012), where players are put in a position of exploring romantic issues without the preconception of heteronormativity- as some have put it, an evolution from mechanics that are explicitly inclusive of queer romance, to mechanics that are queering.
At this time, then, issues of visibility and queer representation are at the best point within the hobby that they have ever been in history. The largest mainstream publisher, WoTC, explicitly acknowledges queer characters within its texts, and Jeremy Crawford (lead designer) is openly gay. There are indie publishers and numerous, numerous games you can get:
Top physical games tagged Queer and Tabletop role-playing game
Find physical games tagged Queer and Tabletop role-playing game like Wanderhome (Full PDF), Fellas, is it Gay...?, CASE & SOUL, In The Time Of Monsters, the girlfriend of my girlfriend is my friend!! on itch.io, the indie game hosting marketplace
itch.io
Obviously, not everything is perfect. But the continuing growth of the hobby, and the growth of the explicit inclusivity of the hobby, has been amazing to watch. It is something everyone should all feel proud of, even while acknowledging more work needs to be done.
So, what do you want to discuss this Pride Month?
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