I have always been a nerd. I was the kid who used to wear my Hogwarts ties to school and think that I looked super fashionable. Even with that level of absolute dorkiness, there have always been aspects of nerd culture that I tended to avoid, roleplaying games (RPGs) being one of the main things. However, after watching a ridiculous amount of Dropout’s Dimension 20, I have become a fully-fledged DND player alongside five good friends.
The RPG community felt like a male-dominated world which is the main reason I tried so hard to avoid it for so long. As a woman, it didn’t feel like a game where I would be welcomed in with open arms. It seemed it was just a way for nerdy, unathletic boys to fantasize about being capable enough to save the helpless princess, not a way to tell a beautiful and compelling story. For years, it was an unattainable game I could never understand because I wasn’t trying to compensate for something.
During the spring, I found myself on CollegeHumor/Dropout TikTok which introduced me to RPG shows/podcasts such as Dimension 20, Critical Role, and Rotating Heroes. With the rise in popularity of DND when Stranger Things came out, these shows found themselves in the perfect environment to rise to popularity. They showed a different side of DND that I had never experienced before. With the inclusion of a diverse cast of characters, the stories being told on screen were ones that reflected my life and experiences. Players like Ally Beardsley, Siobhan Thompson, and Emily Axford are telling stories that reflect the experiences of women and LGBTQ+ people, unlike the stereotypical DND stories that show the masculine experience of combat in fantasy.
Here’s the thing that I never truly understood about DND until now: at its heart it is a game of mostly roleplaying, not strategy. Not to say there is no strategy involved, but it mostly is improvisational storytelling based on character attributes that are also controlled by the dice. You roll a twenty-sided die to determine how much cool stuff you can find in a room or to see if the character that is acting suspiciously has nefarious intentions. The main point is that if you’re the type of girlie who likes to create characters in your head, DND is one of the best ways to bring these characters to life. Ever since middle school, I have created characters in my head to insert into my favorite TV shows and books. With DND, I can bring these characters to life in whatever world I want.
The lack of representation that I found in this community prevented me from ever being interested in this game that I love. The rise in popularity of RPG shows gave me a way to connect to a brand-new community. My advice to you is that if you like to create characters in your head, think about playing DND; it’s really not as hard as you think it is.