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Alright, TTRPG folks, especially the D&D community, we need to talk.
Earlier today, I posted this tweet making fun of the D&D community's willingness to overlook the political elements of the game. I wrote it in 30 seconds, just thinking it would be a funny joke for my friends.
Earlier today, I posted this tweet making fun of the D&D community's willingness to overlook the political elements of the game. I wrote it in 30 seconds, just thinking it would be a funny joke for my friends.
Now, the validity of this tweet isn't what I want to talk about. Whether or not you agree with it isn't important right now, because what we need to talk about is what happened next.
I wrote this tweet as a joke for my mostly indie RPG followers. But it spread to D&D circles.
I wrote this tweet as a joke for my mostly indie RPG followers. But it spread to D&D circles.
This is a small subset of the replies I received within 5 hours.
This isn't even all of it. This isn't cherry-picked, either. I just scrolled down and started screenshotting.
(CW: A homophobic slur, lots of harassment, people defending racism and colonialism)
This isn't even all of it. This isn't cherry-picked, either. I just scrolled down and started screenshotting.
(CW: A homophobic slur, lots of harassment, people defending racism and colonialism)
Again, I don't want to discuss whether or not you agree with my post. Because frankly, I don't care. Because what I want to talk about is the response.
Because this is inexcusable amounts of toxicity for what was just a joke at the expense of a game I've played for a long time.
Because this is inexcusable amounts of toxicity for what was just a joke at the expense of a game I've played for a long time.
This is not a one-off. Indie TTRPG devs are actively afraid of our posts reaching to the D&D-sphere, because when it does, we will ALWAYS get harassed. It's happened to me, It's happened to @MonkipiQuinn, it's happened to @yrgirlkv, and it'll fucking happen again.
I shudder to think of how many brilliant PoC, how many trans people, how many disabled people, were turned away from this community for this exact reason. There's a reason that indie developers are so aggressively queer - we're driven out of D&D spaces by this harassment.
Because the unfortunate reality is that the D&D community cannot handle criticism of D&D, and especially cannot handle it from minorities. And that's horrifying, not just as a trans woman, but as a person who loves this medium.
D&D is, whether you like it or not, a monolith within the industry. It DOMINATES the community and the medium, and TTRPGs as a medium CAN'T grow and develop unless we start to criticize the game that is so big, it's the standard all other TTRPGs are compared to.
D&D is a game. Just like any other. It's not a way of life, it's not a minority, it's not an identity. It's media, and should be criticized as such. But if you criticize D&D or its community for any reason, you get called slurs and get sent death threats.
I know there are good people in the D&D community. There's a ton of them. And I'm directly making a plea to those people right now - we can't let this keep happening, and every single one of you needs to help take a stand against the shit in the community.
I am pretty confident that, if this gets out to the D&D community, there will be vitriolic responses to this post again. But I hope that every single person who replies to this with hate and vitriol realizes the irony of it.
basically:
Last addendum before I mute this thread and move on with my life: Quinn makes a really good point here: https://twitter.com/MonkipiQuinn/status/1267139180401848320?s=20
