Foreword:
This post functions primarily as a transcript for the audio-only presentation recording on the driftoff mobile sleep application. The recording (and subsequently, this transcript) aims to give general audiences a brief overview of queer content in TTRPGs in layperson’s terms, without much of the theory and jargon that is commonplace in TTRPG research. For a more detailed an academic understanding at the history of queerness in TTRPGs, articles such as Stenros & Sihvonen’s Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG Source Books (2015) should serve as a more comprehensive starting point. Please keep the context of this transcript in mind regarding colloquial language and lack of referencing.
You might have heard of the name “Ally Beardsley” before – they’re a comedian, actor, and an absolute god at rolling Nat 20’s at the best times possible. You might also know Ally from Dimension 20, one of the most popular tabletop role-playing game Actual Play series on the internet, produced by Dropout. You might know some of the characters they’ve played; Kristen Applebees, Mother Timothy Goose, Megan Mirror—and if those names ring a bell, then “Pete the Plug” certainly will. Here’s what Ally had to say about creating and playing Pete in a Washington Post article from 2024:
For the second season, I had my sea legs. I created a character for the campaign who was transgender. I had started going by the gender neutral they/them pronouns at work and among friends, but sourcing hormones or getting surgery seemed equal parts expensive and invasive. A fun thing about fantasy is stripping away the crunchy, real-world limitations and asking yourself: “What would I do if I could do anything?”
That season’s arc for my character, Pete, was extremely euphoric for me. I had described him as a trans cowboy you might see at Burning Man, and the artist drew him dressed as a freaky Hunter S. Thompson in an open shirt to show his top surgery scars. He has wild magic — uncontrollable and dangerous in the game mechanics — which we used to explore the painful chaos of leaving a family that doesn’t accept you.
Since then, I’ve started testosterone HRT and had top surgery. It’s funny to listen back to myself playing a character who had transitioned in ways I hadn’t. It’s full of inaccuracies that make me smile. Pete takes a testosterone pill every day; I now know it’s a weekly injection or a topical gel. I see my face, one wrapped up in playing something so new but instantly right. It was like an oracle. (Beardsley in Barker et al., 2024)
Queer play, like what Ally described, is a wonderful means for representation, exploration, experimentation, and ultimately, self-expression. But it hasn’t always been this way, and nor is this all it’s capable of.
Kia ora. My name is Emily Morris. I’m a third year PhD candidate at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, and I study and teach within the School of Design Innovation. My research is concerned with tabletop role-playing games, or TTRPGs for short. I’ve researched queer game design in the past during my Masters, but my PhD is more focused on queer play. Specifically, I’m looking at how queer players, like myself, and like Ally, may choose to play queerly—not only in terms of representation, like playing a gay or trans character like Pete, but how they may create a character that directly transgresses the way a specific TTRPG states a character should be created. Or, to give you another example, how a player may choose to roleplay a certain character in a subversive way, and how those choices may influence how the rest of the players treat both the queer player and character. To put it as simply as possible, I’m studying the choices queer players make when playing, even if that means breaking the game to do so.
In order to understand how a player might choose to queer their play, it’s important to understand the history of queerness in TTRPGs, which is what I’m going to talk to you about very soon. But first, I want to talk about why I’m using the term “queer” rather than “LGBTQIA+” or “Rainbow” or likewise. The first reason is that the term “queer” is much easier to use in conversation, because it can be used as an identifier or noun, an adjective, and a verb. This ease of use is why you’ll see and hear the word “queer” appear more frequently in academic scholarship, such as my own research. But, perhaps more importantly, specifically using the word “queer” is a political choice. It’s an act of reclamation from how it has been historically used as a slur, but also an acknowledgement of the activism and academia that fought to reclaim it in the first place. Reclaiming words is an act of power as well as an act of rebellion, which are two themes that stand out strongly in my research. However, I’m also extremely aware that many LGBTQIA+ people, particularly those of older generations, do not identify with the word “queer,” which is entirely understandable. If hearing me use that word is going to trigger or agitate you, please feel free to navigate away from this recording and choose something else to listen to. It is not my intention to offend anyone, but at the same time, I will not dilute language that is so central to my research and identity. So, with that settled and addressed, let’s move on to the interesting stuff!
You’ve probably clicked on this recording because you’re familiar with TTRPGs already in some capacity. But, for those that aren’t, here’s a brief run-down: tabletop role-playing games (which are also sometimes called pen-and-paper role-playing games) are a type of role-playing game that generally combines rule systems and mechanics with co-operative and dramatic storytelling, character creation, and role-play within a fictional gameworld. Players create a character, role-play as that character, and experience the world and plot through their eyes. The main defining feature of TTRPGs is that they’re games that are played aloud, usually around a tabletop (hence the name). They’re typically played in-person or, thanks largely to COVID-19, digitally via applications like Zoom or Discord, and websites like Roll20, D&D Beyond, and other virtual tabletop sites.
It’s important to note that TTRPGs are distinct from other tabletop games, like board games. TTRPGs and board games may share similar physical components, like dice, miniatures or tokens, and maps or boards, but the nature of these two different types of game is quite significant. In most board games, there are win conditions; the rules state the aim of the game, which might be to collect the most money, or the highest amount of cards, or the largest amount of points. In most TTRPGs, there are no win conditions. The aim of the game is not to win, for winning is typically impossible. The aim of nearly all TTRPGs is to tell a good story. And hopefully have your character survive as well, although some of the best campaigns I’ve played in (or have watched other people playing) do involve some amount of character death, so take from that what you will. The point is that while board games and TTRPGs have some similarities, their core aims are different, which also means that players approach these games differently. Board games, like Monopoly (1935), typically emphasise competitiveness; TTRPGs, like D&D (1974), usually emphasise collaborative teamwork.
Even if you haven’t heard of TTRPGs, I can almost guarantee you’ve heard of D&D, or Dungeons & Dragons. D&D is by far the world’s most popular TTRPG, and for good reason—because it was the world’s first TTRPG (Bowman, 2010; Fine, 1983; Peterson, 2012).
D&D was first commercially published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules. It was initially marketed as “rules for fantastic medieval wargame campaigns playable with paper and pencil and miniature figures,” rather than a tabletop role-playing game because, at the time, there was no such thing. This category of game was established later when players and fans realised that D&D was more than a simulative wargame (Peterson, 2020); the emphasis on characters and magic and world-building, heavily inspired by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (1954a, 1954b, 1955) and related works, pushed it far beyond what wargames traditionally were.
But D&D’s history of being marketed as a wargame is vitally important to understanding where queerness and queer people fit into its narrative. In 1974, D&D was targeted towards two main groups of people: firstly, wargamers, and secondly, fans of fantasy and science fiction literature (Ewalt, 2013; Oliver, 1995; Peterson, 2012, 2020; Zagal & Deterding,
2018). To no one’s surprise, the demographics of these two groups were vastly made up of heterosexual, cisgender, white men; in fact, multiple independent sources and surveys from 1974 indicate that only 0.5% of wargamers were women (Peterson, 2014). So, from its conception, D&D was aimed towards an extremely specific demographic, of which its two creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, were also a part of. This fact is extremely apparent in all source material available from the initial few publications, in that white men were valorised whereas people of colour, women, queer people, disabled people et cetera were made out to be other, abject beings; almost always leaning towards the monstrous, almost never the heroes for players to identify with, and therefore, rarely marketed towards (Pinkston, 2019; Stang & Trammell, 2020).
D&D’s conception inspired both other TTRPGs and other kinds of RPGs like LARPs (live-action role-playing), CRPGs (computer role-playing games) and MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role-playing games), as well as many video games in general (Anthropy, 2012; McGath, 1984; Mortensen, 2014; Zagal & Deterding, 2018). Two of the clearest examples we still see in many modern video games is the concept of ‘HP,’ or hit points, and ‘Boss’ antagonists, who are typically much harder to fight and kill than other NPCs (non-player characters), typically due to their higher HP. Both of these concepts were popularised by D&D. However, D&D’s impact on other games hasn’t always been positively influential. The way that the original sourcebooks treated anyone that wasn’t a heterosexual, cisgender, white man helped to embed a harmful legacy in the games industry. While D&D of course wasn’t solely responsible, the toxic, hegemonic, and militaristic masculinities it promoted are still pervasive in many games and game communities to this day (Chang, 2017; Fron et al., 2007; Nephew, 2006; Trammell, 2018). However hard it may be to admit it, this is an undeniable fact.
But what about queerness in such early editions of D&D? Unfortunately, the content in the sourcebooks very much encapsulated these queerphobic points of view. There are some examples that stand out strongly: one of the most well-known exists in 1979’s D&D Dungeon Masters Guide [sic]on page 145. The “Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity” is a curse item which, from it’s classification alone, demonstrates the viewpoint of transgenderism as a curse. Commonly used as a prank item, the Girdle irreversibly changes the sex of the character without consent when worn. The mere existence of such an item also demonstrates dangerous beliefs: about detransitioning and the permanency of transitioning; about non-binaryphobia and discrimination against people that exist outside binary notions of gender, including intersex people; the idea that only a higher, divine power has the ability to change gender; and the fact that the curse removes all consent from transitioning and changing gender; it is a curse that removes autonomy and agency from both player and character (Carter, 2022; Fanning, 2020). Similar queerphobic mechanics exist in other official published source material, like Gygax’s 1978 adventure module The Tomb of Horrors, which was also somehow re-released in 2017 to work with the 5th edition system of D&D—with the transphobia left in. Even Tactical Studies Rules, D&D’s initial publisher, had a code of ethics that supposedly banned abnormal and abject “sexual perversions” from the game at least up until 1994, as my research has been able to find (Lowder, 2018; Morris, 2022). That is to say that for at least the first 20 years of D&D’s publication and history, queerness was officially banned from the game.
But that didn’t stop queer players. No, it did not.
It is no secret that queer players have been involved in TTRPGs since their conception. As Thom James Carter writes in his brilliant book, They Came to Slay: The Queer Culture of D&D (2022) (which I highly recommend, by the way), “queer people have always been present at D&D tables. To say they hadn’t would be to render them invisible and tell a warped history of queerness in and around D&D.” (p. 26) Even given just some of the harmful ways TTRPGs have treated queer people, as I mentioned before, that has not stopped queer and other marginalised players with intersectional identities from engaging with D&D and other TTRPGs. We know this not only colloquially, but also through the long history D&D has of both official and fan-published material in the form of both zines and magazines. One of the earliest mentions of queerness in TTRPGs in an article by Clint Bigglestone in 1979 in Different Worlds issue 3, in which Bigglestone discusses the art of role-playing; he writes that playing a character different to yourself (specifically, a straight character for a gay player, and vice versa) can be an eye-opening and empathy-generating experience, and that above all else: “whatever you do, in playing any type of character, don’t rely on stereotypes (not even from comedy) for your models. They’re seldom accurate, and almost always demeaning.” (p. 20) Possibly one of the oldest published mentions of queerness in TTRPGs in a positive light, this example demonstrates that even if published games at the time were intolerable of queer people and their identities, there were still queer players and their allies that must have interacted with them.
Unfortunately, very little scholarship exists that examines how queer players played TTRPGs like D&D, especially before the 2000s. Some scholars (see: Stenros & Sihvonen, 2015) have tried to document all published mentions of queerness in TTRPG sourcebooks since D&D was first published in 1974, but very little positive representation and reference existed until the ‘90s. The publisher White Wolf, responsible for publishing the World of Darkness setting and series of role-playing games, was one of the first to represent queerness in a more positive light in 1991’s Vampire: The Masquerade, also colloquially known as simply Vampire. As sex and sexuality are among the main themes of the game, it makes sense that queerness was also an important facet of Vampire. It’s worth noting that White Wolf have been very open about the fact that Vampire was aimed at a very different target audience than that of D&D; an audience that was more mature and alternative, and therefore capable of having more productive discussions about sexuality (Stenros & Sihvonen, 2015). Namely, the creators and the players of Vampire tended to lean into and be part of Gothic sub-cultures and communities. This is possibly one of the main reasons why many queer people found their home within Vampire and the World of Darkness games; because they were welcomed and understood, becoming monsters of their own making, rather than being utterly mis-represented in D&D and similar games.
This would be a good time to say that like D&D, Vampire doesn’t exist without criticism; in the 1991 edition particularly, many of the different clans that characters can belong to are full of racial stereotypes that negatively depict real-world minorities. While much of clan history has been re-written in the 5th version of the game, published in 2018, there are still some glaring issues within the system itself. The point is: while Vampire: The Masquerade was and stillis still far from a perfect game, the way that it brought queer players and characters into the fold of published TTRPG source material in the early ‘90s was surely a milestone moment for the queer TTRPG community. From this point on, as some scholarship notes (Stenros & Sihvonen, 2015), queer content and characters began to be featured more positively in TTRPG source books. But it wasn’t until the 2000’s that more meaningful representation for the queer community came about.
One of the most well-known and beloved examples exists in Green Ronin Publishing’s 2005 TTRPG, Blue Rose. Using its own variant of the D&D 3rd Edition d20 system, Blue Rose’s publication was a pivotal point in the history of TTRPG publication. Part of the ‘romantic fantasy’ genre, the premise of the game is extremely different to that of D&D, which was (and still is) focused around combat and linear level progression; rather, Blue Rose’s focus lies in the emotional and social relationships formed between characters in game, ultimately queering the purpose the d20 system originally served. Notably, Blue Rose’s target demographic also lay elsewhere, as it was primarily aimed towards women. But what stood out most about Blue Rose is that, embedded with feminist politics and principles, it was the first TTRPG to accept and celebrate characters of any gender and sexual orientation and their relationships, including polyamory—and this acceptance could also easily be extended to players as well.
While Blue Rose didn’t receive much attention from the public at the time, despite winning numerous awards, it had a revival in 2017 with its crowdfunded second edition. Since then, Blue Rose has found the audience it was lacking during its initial publication, now offering a slew of adventure modules and even fictional anthologies for purchase. Like Vampire in 1991, Blue Rose in 2005 marked a change in the TTRPG world—one where it was entirely possible to create a compelling game that not only included queer characters but hardcoded them into the world and lore of the game.
Since 2005, and particularly from the 2010’s onward, many queer TTRPGs have arrived on the scene, with the majority published independently. Notable games that have really shaped the landscape of queer TTRPGs include trans game designer Avery Alder’s works, such as 2012’s Monsterhearts, 2013’s The Quiet Year, and 2018’s Dream Askew. Jay Dragon, also a trans game designer, is another prominent voice that has influenced what we mean when we say that a TTRPG is queer, as evidenced by 2020’s Sleepaway and, most famously, 2021’s Wanderhome. Other popular games such as April Kit Walsh’s 2021 Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Andrew Gillis’s 2023 Girl by Moonlight, and Logan Timmins’ 2021 LOGAN: An Autobiographical Tabletop Game all take different approaches to not only queer representation, but what it means to queer the genre of TTRPGs. And that brings us to 2025, where the queer gaming scene is more vibrant and colourful than ever before, thanks in part to the wonderful and ever-growing collection of queer TTRPGs.
But it’s also thanks, mostly in part, to the queer players who never stopped playing, even when queer content was supposedly banned from the games they were playing. It’s thanks to the allies who still welcomed queer players and characters to their tables. It’s thanks to queer community, who refused to leave.
But before we wrap up, there’s something worth returning to: Dungeons and Dragons.
D&D and its current publishers, Wizards of the Coast, celebrated just last year the 50th anniversary of D&D’s original release and publication. They marked it by releasing an updated 5th edition of the game (also, notably, 10 years after the original 5th edition was published). So, in terms of queerness, what’s changed?
From the older editions to the 2024 edition, much has changed. The cursed “Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity” can’t be seen anywhere. There is no code of ethics limiting queer play or content. There are more balanced depictions of women and people of colour to white men in the illustrations of the book as well as the contextual role-play examples. The pronouns “he/him” are no longer used and assumed as “neutral” for the player or the character, which was the case and was stated explicitly in the 1989 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Player Handbook. Character “races” are now titled “species” and do not receive extra bonuses to ability scores. All these changes are somewhat positive, and a step in the right direction. And yet, the 2024 Player’s Handbook still does not explicitly state that a player’s character can be of any gender, sexuality, or romantic inclination; the word “sexuality” doesn’t even appear, and the most explicit mention of gender only urges to the player to think about what gender their character is. That’s very different than openly stating that a character can be any gender.
Some people may argue that this is implied—and, taken out of context, I can see how this would be the case. But, given the context that D&D lives in—that is, a history of wargaming, fantasy literature, science fiction literature, and the genre conventions and traditional worldbuilding settings of all three—it is painfully obvious that D&D and Wizards of the Coast are still openly catering to their largely conservative, heterosexual, cisgender, white male fanbase by refusing to explicitly state that a character can be any type of queer. This is the state of play we find ourselves in in 2025. Even though D&D-adjacent franchises such as Baldur’s Gate 3 are wildly popular, in part, because of their queer content, Wizards of the Coast still refuses to portray queerness explicitly in the base rules for D&D itself. While it’s easily possible to play a queer character, the fact that the rules do not say that as such means that queer people and players are still not the target demographic for D&D. We’ve never been. But we’ll keep playing regardless.
This is what queer play is, and it demonstrates exactly the reason why I’m researching it. Queer play is not just representation, though it does stem from it. Queer play is a desire to shape the game to the player’s needs, even if that means breaking the rules of the game (written or unwritten) in the first place. It means subverting expectations, transgressing norms, and playing for pleasures other than fun. It means not only transforming, but transcending games altogether. And it means having a community of players that supports you in your queer adventures.
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