Queer TTRPG Studies is an academic movement that heavily draws from intersectional disciplines such as queer theory, feminist studies, crip theory, and critical race theory. It applies insight from these fields and others—such as game design—to the study of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) and related artefacts. Such scholarship has the potential to not only broaden the field of TTRPG studies, but to other fields such as media studies, sociology, and education.

Queer TTRPG Studies is heavily inspired by the staunch brilliance, breadth, and depth of Ruberg & Shaw’s Queer Game Studies (2017). But it is also a call to action: to defy the hegemonic, sexist, racist, queerphobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ablest, and downright discriminatory past of TTRPGs. This problematic legacy began with the publication of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 and reaches back to the wargames, science fiction, and fantasy literature, and associated fandoms that preceded it. The history of mainstream TTRPGs, though relatively short, is filled with exclusionary content that reinforces hegemonic narratives. Gary Gygax’s bio-essentialist politics influenced many aspects of early D&D, and the imperialist and militaristic masculinities encouraged by wargaming persist in many TTRPGs today. Even now, in 2024, problematic terms like ‘Races’ remain in use in D&D and similar games.

And even so: queer people, people of colour, women, and many, many others have always been present at the tables that TTRPGs make claim to. We may not appear in the source books, we may be demonised by Codes of Ethics, we may be stereotyped and caricatured and ridiculed beyond belief, but we have always been here, and we always will be. Queer TTRPG Studies acknowledges this and not only defends our right to be and to have been here, but encourages a re-writing of history to focus on queerness—not only in means of representation, for we know our selves are not to be found in half-hearted attempts at inclusion, but in the people around the table, in how we play, in queering itself.

By queering—that is, queering play, games, characters, and selves—we can discover new ways of being, playing, gaming, and designing. Queering allows us to find the gaps and the margins, the spine where the pages of sourcebooks meet, and to decide whether we want to fill such gaps with ourselves or tear them open to replace them entirely. The action of queering is one of re-imagining; of transformation, transfiguration, and translation. It is soft and it is hard, it is quiet and it is loud, it is utopic and dystopic (and sometimes, downright apocalyptic). But above all; queering is a fluid action: it exists in multiple realities at once, explores possible selves and worlds and dreams, and embraces the nature of liminality and ephemerality.

Queering, in terms of TTRPGs, could include anything. From creating and playing characters with fluid identities or using them as alibi for queer identity exploration, to engaging in explicitly queer relationships or kinship ties, to deliberately engaging in stereotypes in order to subvert them—queering can exist in any and all types of play, regardless of what the rules say or what the table (or, even more broadly, the community) expects. But queerness also lends itself to radicality: to transgressing the rules, to playing for something other than fun, to breaking the game, to creating some new from its brittle bones entirely.

This is all to say: queerness is resistance. It always has been, and it always will be, and one day we will outgrow the word ‘queer’ altogether. But until then, we have a duty in both academia and the margins of our own lives to critically, queerly investigate and understand others and ourselves. One way we can do this is through TTRPGs, and all the identity play and exploration they have to offer. By queering TTRPGs and the way we design, play, and study them, we can disrupt the overly hegemonic industry that produces mainstream games and the demographic they solely seek to please.

While Queer TTRPG Studies is based primarily around not only the identifier but the active concept of queerness, it would be remiss to not mention and acknowledge other collective affinities, societal identifiers, and the performatives that continue to oppress them, much in the way that queer people, especially trans and intersex people, have historically been oppressed. Women, people of colour, disabled people, neurodivergent people, migrants, refugees, poor people, children, the elderly, people of alternative faith/s, and all others that hegemonic society has/does not encompass—at various points in history (and throughout most of it), we have all been discriminated against, and this history of exclusion has served to continue to proliferate the hegemonic order that “society” deems both natural and inevitable. In truth, it is anything but. Thus, I invite everyone and their intersectional identities to engage in queerness and queer play; for queerness is not something experienced in isolation, but informed by the catalyst of everything we are, have been, and could still be. It is a movement against exclusion and dominant narratives, of sameness, of erasing histories and cultures and faiths. Queerness is disruption of the highest order, of imagining a future that is better than this, of dismantled barriers and the rubble of age-old performatives. It is recognising complexity, fluidity, and the ever-changing state of not only our selves, but our identities, our environment, our values. Queerness is something that is never finished, it is always a becoming, and so when discussing queer play, I encourage everyone to engage, not just those who are LGBTQIA+; for we have already learnt and bodily felt the effects that exclusion wreaks.

The aims and goals of Queer TTRPG Studies are, much like queerness itself, limitless. But if a list were to be made, it would read as follows. Queer TTRPG Studies aims to:

• Encourage intersectional research on TTRPGs that draws from a range of disciplines while prioritising active and iterative self-reflexivity and accountability;
• Create a space where not only queer representation is found to be worthy of researching, but all types of queerness and intersectionality that disrupts or has the potential to;
• Foster a community of research and researchers that desire to interrupt mainstream TTRPGs and the hegemonic audiences they cater to;
• Provide a platform for voices that are often underrepresented in TTRPG design, play, and scholarship, including trans, intersex, and non-binary people, people of colour, neurodivergent people, and others often marginalised within TTRPG communities;
• Actively question and critique the dominant narratives in past, current, and future TTRPGs that reinforce heteronormative, cisnormative, ableist, and white-centred storytelling, and encourage research that explores how queer narratives can broaden the storytelling potential of TTRPGs;
• Draw both scholarly and public attention to indie TTRPGs and their designers who create consciously, critically queer games, and the implications they may have on players;
• Advocate for the creation, inclusion, analysis, and worth of game systems and mechanics that embody aspects of queer experiences and reflect queer values;
• Promote research that not only analyses TTRPGs and play, but also advocates for changes within the industry, alongside supporting initiatives that aim to dismantle discriminatory practices and build more inclusive gaming environments;
• Ensure that both play and academic spaces are accessible and welcoming to a wide array of people beyond scholars and those already familiar with TTRPGs, embracing a wide array of entry points for those unfamiliar with academic theory or mainstream TTRPGs;
• Explore and advocate for TTRPGs as educational tools that can be used to teach queer theory, empathy, and diversity in academic settings, community workshops, or informal learning environments;
• And ensure that Queer TTRPG Studies is accessible and actionable for people outside academia, particularly game designers, gamemasters, and players, enabling broader engagement and real-world impact. This will be achieved through open-access publishing, online resources, accessible language, and user-friendly web design.

So, consider this your invitation—to contribute to the quickly blooming discussion of Queer TTRPG Studies, but to also create, to dream, to dare, to rebel. Then again, you’ve probably been doing that all along, haven’t you?

Queer TTRPG Studies is for just about anyone and everyone, for marginalised and intersectional people, players, and their allies. If you’d like to contribute to the world of research this movement and blog hopes to foster, please reach out to the email address below to have a chat or send an article proposal. Or, better yet, take this manifesto and make it your own, because Queer TTRPG Studies doesn’t just belong to any one person—it belongs to all of us.