Gender and Dragons: Exploring GenderIdentity through Dungeons and Dragons
By Claire Watson (Features Editor)
You’re sitting at a table. Dim lights cloak the surrounding world in shadow, so that all you see are each other’s faces. Dice, ranging from 6 faces to 20 lay sprawled before you across sheets of paper full of numbers and near-illegible scrawlings. At the top of the page you see a blank space where it calls on you to write down your character’s name. You and your friends, now your party, have spent weeks preparing for this moment; flicking through books with dragons painted across their covers, searching for different types of spells or the damage dealt by different moments. Frantic texts sent to your friend, now your Dungeon Master, have all led you to this very moment. What do you do?
Though you might not have played Dungeons and Dragons, D&D for short, given the role-playing game’s recent resurgence in popularity, it is likely that you’ve come across the game at some point or another. The Netflix show Stranger Things opens with its protagonists playing D&D and accidentally releasing the game’s Demogorgon into reality. D&D live streams such as Critical Role and Dimension 20 have made the game accessible to thousands of people. As D&D games typically last around 4 hours, not including the preparation time, watching other people (typically voice actors and comedians) play can be a great way to engage with the game.
Around since the 70s, the game has been through many editions, updating the game and its mechanics. Currently we’re on the game’s 5th edition, hence why you might see it referred to as D&D. It’s also been through many controversies, mainly due to its use of racism to construct fantasy races and its sexualisation of female characters. Early editions placed a cap on female characters’ strength. But modern media and technology has allowed the game to become something bigger than itself, with more and more players disregarding the rule-books and creating their own.
As D&D has you building characters from scratch, the game offers many opportunities for players to explore different gender expressions. Once you finally create your characters, the rules fade into the background and the game begins. Your Dungeon Master will guide you and your friends into the fantasy world of their choice, or creation, and you will begin playing the adventure they have written. The game begins, and you’re no longer yourself but the characters you’ve created. It can be strange at first, learning to respond as your ‘player character’ instead of yourself, but once you get accustomed to it, the game becomes an incredibly freeing experience.
You’re sitting at a table, you can be anyone you want to be. For transgender and genderqueer players, this can be euphoric. The boundaries of a gender binary can fade away, as you engage with a world of your own creation. Personally, D&D has been a great way for me to explore my gender presentation, and I wanted to find out if other players felt the same way. I created a survey in which participants could share how playing D&D contributed to their gender identity, and vice versa.
I first asked if players enjoyed role-playing as characters whose genders align with theirs. Responses were varied but transgender and cisgender participants were equally divided amongst the options. The majority of participants revealed that they did not feel strongly one way or another, and played as characters that shared their same gender identity, and ones that didn’t. This reinforced to me the freedom and fluidity of choice that D&D offers. When given the opportunity, players will choose whichever gender expression feels right in the moment. I generally play androgynous characters, but have had plenty of fun playing as hyper-feminine and broodingly-masculine characters. In my experience of D&D, the gender binary that pervades everyday society, is non-existent.
D&D provides players with an opportunity to be non-binary, something that is sorely lacking across the gaming industry. While recent releases have opted to refer to ‘gender’ as ‘style’ and, with things like clothing, facial hair, and make-up, have made character customisation relatively gender neutral, there is still a divide between what is considered feminine and what is considered masculine, especially as age-ratings increase. Nintendo’s child-friendly games such as Animal Crossing, Splatoon and Pokemon, offer players with relative freedom in creating their characters. However, games that are geared towards adults, such as Monster Hunter or even the D&D inspired Baldur’s Gate, still divide gender on the basis of muscular men and voluptuous women.
One participant writes, “I try and change up what types of characters I play as much as possible, playing a different combination of class and race with each new campaign, and this includes changing my gender identity to explore new character dynamics!” Role-playing as different genders can be a great way to develop a deeper understanding of your personal boundaries when it comes to gender. I went into D&D believing that playing hyper-feminine characters would make me dysphoric. But in doing so, I was able to forge a connection with my femininity that I still use to express myself. In D&D, character creation extends beyond aesthetics. If you’re really into role-playing, it can affect how you carry yourself and respond to the environment you’ve been placed in.
Fantasy enables queerness. When fantasy societies are built around the existence of dragons and magic, what weight does a gender binary hold? Even so, when you’re sitting around, rolling dice to play glorified make-believe, why should the existence of queer bodies be given a moment’s thought? 100% of participants stated that they felt safe expressing and exploring their gender identity whilst playing D&D. As one participant reasons, “It’s a fictional setting with very little real world repercussions.” The rules of D&D are designed to be bent to the player’s will, and discarded if needs be. Another participant writes, “The game allows you to explore how you understand gender and your own identity without making it the central aspect of the experience, thus taking [out] the daunting nature of such self exploration.”
Popular D&D streams such as Critical Role, Dimension 20 and High Rollers, have made adamant efforts in presenting a diverse range of characters. In recording their games, the Dungeon Masters of these shows make conscious efforts to include queer characters in their cast. The early episodes of Critical Role’s second campaign sees its Dungeon Master, Matthew Mercer, playfully chastising his players for assuming the gender and pronouns of his NPCs (non-player characters). Throughout his series, High Rollers’ Dungeon Master, Mark Hulmes, has created a cast of canonically transgender and non-binary NPCs, and over the course of the series, documented his own exploration with gender and drag.
As demonstrated by these on-screen Dungeon Masters, D&D can be a great way to practise allyship, and become accustomed to different or changing pronouns. One participant explains how D&D allowed them to grow more comfortable with using different pronouns. While another participant writes, “I also found it was a really good way to practice! For example, to get comfortable with the use of neopronouns for people, I made characters with neopronouns to get more familiar with it.” As a Dungeon Master, by creating queer NPCs for your players to interact with, you naturally create an open and safe environment for your players to express their identity.
While D&D was once seen as a typically masculine hobby, enthusiasts, on camera and off, have made great efforts in transforming the game into an open and accommodating space. Wizards of the Coast, the company behind D&D, has demonstrated its strive towards inclusivity by hiring ‘sensitivity readers.’ This practice began following the company’s release of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space which included the offensive ‘Hadozee’ race, whose physical design resembles caricatures of people of colour. Following this controversy the company has initiated a stricter review process to prevent this from happening again. As difficult as this situation was for many fans of the franchise, the backlash the company received shows that oppressive ideologies have no place in the D&D community.
D&D is about self-expression. Whether that is by using the game as a way to explore your identity or to escape the constraints of reality, playing as whoever you want is powerful. The only limit is you and your dice.
