DUNGEONS, DRAGONS AND DIVERSITY. OH MY!
There are also still a lot of video games that only have male or female as an option in character creation with little regard to how gender performance and identity can affect the player
I’ve written before about the value of representation across media platforms. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart and one I’ve been fighting for since I realized how much representation we still lack. Of course there are some few characters sprinkled here and there that really bring it home, and with the world slowly but surely acclimating to the truth of LGBTQ’s existence, the number of queer characters continues to rise.
However, there is one avenue that I believe still needs work when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation and that’s video games.
For the most part, main characters in video games still default to feature cisgendered white men, and in games where you can play as either male or female, game trailers tend to feature only the male option. There are also still a lot of video games that only have male or female as an option in character creation with little regard to how gender performance and identity can affect the player.
Enter the popular tabletop roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).
D&D is a game where a bunch of friends comes together and roleplay as heroes in a fantasy adventure. Each player makes a character except for one who assumes the role of the Dungeon Master (DM) who instead focuses their time and energy on world-building, throwing quests at the characters, controlling the monsters and villains that the players must defeat and encouraging general fun. In the end, the goal is to tell an epic story of how a party of heroes managed to overcome evil in a fantasy world. Also, we use weirdly shaped polyhedral dice to decide if our actions succeed or not.
What does D&D have to do with all of this? You see, D&D is no longer the game played by cisgender heterosexual men in their parents’ basement. Ever since the critically acclaimed Netflix show Stranger
Things brought D&D back into the spotlight, the game has made a resurgence and everyone all over the world is either playing it or has heard about it and is dying to play it.
In D&D you can play anyone of any race (human, half-orc, dragonborn, elf, etc.) specializing in any class (fighter, cleric, rogue, bard, etc.) and coming from any background with any number of personality traits. So why wouldn’t a game with such customizability such as D&D call for the players to have their characters identify as any gender or sexuality?
In my first game as a player (I usually assume the role as the DM), I played a dragonborn bard which raised quite a bit of eyebrows at the table but I pressed on. My half-dragon character could play the lyre as well as any other being with nonclawed hands because why not?
It came to a point where my character was in a stare-down with a female bandit leader after calling her a coward for slaughtering a tribe of harmless gnomes. That’s when the DM asked me, “Is your character male or female?” I stopped for a second before finally saying “neither.”
The table went silent.
The DM smiled before saying, “Alright.” The sound of a dice roll came from behind the DM screen and much to our entire party’s amazement, the bandit leader sheathed her sword laughing and praised my character for their bravery instead of cutting them down.
My dragonborn let out a breath they didn’t know they were holding in and so did I.
The rest of the game played out like no other and I took a silent victory in knowing that the other players at the table accepted my non-binary dragonborn bard as a worthy ally in their quest for greatness.
D&D can be played with the price of paper, pencils and some dice. In fact, the basic rules of the game can be found online for free and I urge you to give it a try. Gather your fiercest companions and be any epic hero you want. The only limit is your imagination. And the dice, of course.
Ever since the critically acclaimed Netflix show Stranger Things brought D&D back into the spotlight, the game has made a resurgence and everyone all over the world is either playing it or has heard about it and is dying to play it.