Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 41 - RPG Gatekeeping

Episode Date: October 4, 2020

RPG Gatekeeping is the practice of deciding someone isn't worthy of participating in our hobby or that because they look different, have different beliefs, or lead a different lifestyle, they can't participate in our hobby.  It's wrong.  In this episode Jeremy talks about the need to be accepting of everyone in the hobby, young/old, straight/gay/bi, cis/trans.  None of that matters.  What matters is can you sit at the table and have a good time together.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to Taking20, episode 41, RPG Gatekeeping. Our sponsor this week is Guillotine's Barbershop. Remember when barbers also bled people to reduce their bad humors? Guillotine still does. Stop by today. So gatekeeping is when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does and does not have the access or rights to a community or identity. It can be someone who takes it upon themselves to make others feel like they're not worthy of playing tabletop role-playing

games. They try to imply someone isn't worthy to participate in a hobby because they don't have the knowledge of the lore. They use the wrong words. They're new to the game. They've never used certain rules or aspects of the game. Oh, you've never been a brawler? Well, obviously you don't know D&D. They'll say things like, go back to Skyrim, hold your hand along the way. You're not a real fan or a real player. Don't try to tell me about Dungeons and Dragons. I played first edition. Oh, you play Dungeons and Dragons? That's cute. I play Pathfinder because it's crunchier. You probably wouldn't like it because of all the math. Gatekeepers are people who say things like, you're playing the game wrong. I don't like the way you play. Oh, they've just watered down the game for women and minorities and because of political correctness. This game

isn't for people like you. With your new dice and your new books, you weren't around for D&D 3rd edition, so you're not a real gamer. Or they think a player is the wrong age, gender identity, political party, or anything else that smacks of tribalism. Taking all the flowery language off of it, gatekeeping is being abusive to someone, verbally or maybe even physically, to attempt to exclude them. And I want to make sure I clarify my position on this two minutes in. RPG gatekeeping is wrong. Period. Hard stop. End of discussion. I'm going to quote Matthew Perkins, who had a great YouTube video on this topic.

Gatekeepers are cowards, and the reason they gatekeep is because of insecurity. They need to feel like they're experts and have the authority to decide who can and cannot play. They may even think they're protecting the integrity of the game, if you will. Now, don't get me wrong. If you're running a gaming group at your house and you have a group of friends who know each other, you're comfortable with each other, and you don't want to expand your list of players that are part of the group, that's called a gaming group. That's not gatekeeping. Now, if you't want to expand your list of players that are part of the group, that's called a gaming group. That's not gatekeeping. Now, if you are looking to expand your gaming group

and you bring in some people and they just don't mesh well with your personality or the personalities of the other players, maybe they're looking for a different type of game, again, that's not gatekeeping. That's called finding people who want to enjoy playing a game with each other and have the similar idea of what a game would be. However, if you're expanding your gaming group or running a new table and exclude people because you don't feel like they're worthy of being at the table or aren't good enough to participate

or because they're different than you are, you're gatekeeping, plain and simple. Listen, Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop RPGs have experienced a huge resurgence in recent years. The British show The IT Crowd, Stranger Things on Netflix, Let's Play or Live Play shows like Critical Role, Glass Cannon, and Dice Camera Action. More people than ever have been exposed to this hobby and they're looking for places to play and places to learn about the game.

That means we have people coming to our gaming stores, our conventions, our gaming tables, and even reaching out to us one-on-one to learn about what RPG gaming is. Friends, siblings, significant others, acquaintances, co-workers, strangers on the street. You may hear, oh, you're a DM? I'd love to try, but I don't know where to start. That's a huge hint that they want to learn about RPGs, and this is your opportunity to teach them. Our hobby is growing by leaps and bounds with more and more diverse people being a

part of it, and our hobby is better for it. This isn't the 1980s anymore. These days, people playing Dungeons and Dragons aren't living in our parents' basement, rolling our math rocks, and correcting each other about rules. No, this is the 21st century. My bet is that if you pick an RPG player at random these days, they will be different than you in one or more ways. Racially, gender identity, socioeconomically, and so forth. But to be clear, just because someone looks or acts differently than we do, that shouldn't matter. Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs are for everyone. We do not have the right to tell anyone that D&D isn't for them. Whether they're 11 years old or 91 years old, they have 45 piercings on their face,

they have darker skin, different dangly bits between their legs, or are old white cis MFers like me. We need to play this game and represent tabletop roleplaying in such a way that everyone feels comfortable. Some of my family and I have drastically different political views. It doesn't mean they wouldn't be welcome at my table. We just may not have a campaign that revolves around, say, the best way to deal with terrorism or a pandemic. I think we'd go a different direction. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and plans on trying to keep people away from RPG tables. At least I hope that's true.

So let's talk about what not to do. If a new player comes in who's of a gender that sets your loins on fire, whatever that is, remember, they're obviously showing up to the D&D table to get hit on, flirted with, or made to feel sexually objectified. I mean, obviously, right? Number two of things not to do. Make sure you let everyone know who looks or acts differently so they realize how different they are than everyone else around the table. Three, about what not to do. Since you've been playing RPGs longer, you should tell the new players exactly how to play their character. Oh, you should fireball

here. Oh, you should magic missile there. Make sure everyone knows how smart you are and make sure they know they're doing it wrong. Point out all the flaws in the design of their character and how they didn't make the optimal choice all the way along the way. And make sure you let them know when their announced actions are wrong. It helps the new players learn.

Number four of what you shouldn't do. Make sure you play a character that has an automatic dislike for other characters. Oh, one of the characters is a lesbian drow? Well, time to pull out my neo-nazi homophobic anti-elf character just to counter. Five of what not to do. If someone new to the game asks about learning to play, but they are younger, older, have a nose ring, make sure you let them know that they're not true D&D players. Gatekeeping is not unique to the RPG genre. There's gatekeeping in the most unusual of places. You're not a true board gamer if you only play Monopoly or Risk and not more

complicated games. Young people shouldn't be able to vote if they can't type complete sentences on their phones. Or from Twitter in 2012, Drake posted, the first million is the hardest, and T-Boone Pickens responded to him basically saying, first billion's a hell of a lot harder. You've got billionaires gatekeeping millionaires at that point. But my personal favorite I found was on Reddit, the gatekeeping subreddit. Someone posted a picture of their breakfast with an omelet, fried potatoes with ketchup, and a few other things. Someone responded to that with, and I quote, ketchup is unacceptable if you're over the age of 12, and it's always unacceptable with breakfast. Disgusting, sickly sweet bastardization of the glorious tomato.

Now there's a lot of layers of psychological trauma we could peel off of this post. Why does this person hate ketchup so much? Were they spanked as a child with their head immersed in a big vat of Heinz? And why does this person call tomatoes glorious? Is there some sort of weird tomato religion that I don't know about? Do they have joint meetings with Pastafarianism? I have so many questions. But regardless, what this person is saying is you're doing breakfast wrong. I mean, how dare you like something I don't like, and that obviously means you're doing it wrong. That's gatekeeping. Listen, I have been guilty of a form of gatekeeping,

and I'm embarrassed to admit it. I have a useless ability to do math really quickly in my head. It's my one skill. Let me have it. I was on college bowl academic teams in high school and college and was, quote, the math guy, end quote. Calculating the area under a curve, solve these multiple equations for x, gimme gimme gimme, I want. Over the years while I was gaming, players would roll a large number of dice for damage, sometimes with spells and so forth. A lot of times they were slower adding the dice than I was, so I'd lean over and tell them what the dice added up to.

Now, it seems like it's not a big deal, but my doing the math unprompted for them was subconsciously saying, you're not smart enough to play this game. I was doing this shit as recently as last year. My intention was to be helpful, but I've learned since then that I was making them feel stupid. When I realized that, I was mortified. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I didn't want to make someone feel inferior. I have a skill they don't. They have 10 skills I don't. So I don't do that anymore, except in one of my games, one player always sits next to me and he loves playing arcane spellcasters.

Wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, and so forth that can do massive damage. He's made a huge show of letting everyone know how much he hates doing the math associated with it. So he casts a spell, it does damage, he rolls 12d6, and he scoots his dice tray my direction. That's my cue to go ahead and add the numbers for him, so him, I happily help. But everybody else, if they ask me to, I'll help. But short of that, I don't anymore. I don't want to make anyone feel like they are not worthy of playing this game. When you gatekeep, even unintentionally, even if it's as minor as doing math unprompted for a

player, you're making someone feel like they're not worthy, and therefore you're a monster. And to quote the introduction to Vampire the Masquerade's 5th edition, our game is about monsters, but they're not excuses to be one yourself. I believe this hobby should be open to everyone. We need to make sure we aren't denigrating, making fun of, disparaging people new to the hobby just because they haven't played as long as we have. We need to make everyone feel comfortable around the table. And here's the thing. I mentioned I'm an old white cis guy,

so very rarely have I been subject to gatekeeping. But just because we're not targeted by gatekeeping doesn't mean that we can't be part of the solution. It doesn't mean that we can't call it out when we see it happen. I spoke to some of my friends and local gamers about gatekeeping they've experienced. I specifically want to focus on gender at the gaming table, specifically non-males. Years ago, the tabletop hobby was overwhelmingly male. Not because women couldn't or wouldn't play, but there was this perceived social stigma of playing this hobby. Because of RPG gatekeeping, women a lot of times weren't made to feel welcome. Every year at conventions and

gaming meetups, if you go to some of the discussion boards and discords, you will hear reports of women who are being physically or verbally sexually harassed. She shows up to the table and people treat her differently or as a potential outlet for pent-up sexual frustration. Guys fall all over themselves to show her how smart they are, or they try to white knight their way into her panties. The modern renaissance of gaming has exposed a wide variety of people to the hobby. Men and women, cisgender and transgender, a wide variety of nationalities, ethnicities, socioeconomic groups. And every one of those has the same right to your chair as you have. So one of the things I started researching is why would players gatekeep? Well, okay, reason number one as to why they gatekeep is they want to feel superior.

They've suffered from being a nerd, and they think only those people who suffered should be able to play. There's a great example of gatekeeping gone wrong in the Borderlands 2 DLC, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. One of the game characters who grew up persecuted for her tattoos and magical ability and so forth, named Lilith, says another game character who's muscle-bound, loud, and brash, Mr. Torg, isn't nerdy enough to play a tabletop RPG and makes him answer fantasy and sci-fi trivia questions to prove how much of a geek he is. That's the very definition of gatekeeping. The good news in the game, though, is at least he was allowed to play as an NPC that gives quests. The people

gatekeeping want to feel like since they had a different life experience, they are somehow more qualified to play RPGs, and that could not be further from the truth. Reason number two why players gatekeep. Players who are different make them feel uncomfortable. Someone who grew up playing sports versus someone who didn't. People who the gamers perceive as popular. People who the gamers perceive as not geeky enough. Reason number three of why players gatekeep.

Gatekeepers don't understand how to interact with people of different genders, so they immediately get their defenses up. Different gender identities just makes them feel uncomfortable. This attitude is no different than people who exclude others from other walks of life based on politics, like I won't be friends with anyone from X political party, or I won't be friends with anyone who roots for Y sports team. It's no different. You're excluding people from being potential friends and potential game players solely based on their identity. Reason number four, they're just petty, cowardly assholes who are looking for a chance to pick on others.

They were made to feel uncomfortable, and maybe this is a type of revenge for them. So how do we make sure we don't gatekeep? The easiest answer is to open your table to people who aren't like you. New players, players of different social groups, players of different sexual identities. No matter how they're different, the more diverse your gaming group is, the better it will be. Realize that gaming table isn't your local dating site. Regardless of your gender, their gender, don't make someone feel uncomfortable just because you're sexually attracted to them. Three, let everyone play their own damn character. Even if they're not min-maxing, and you do. Even if they don't make the absolute ideal choices in this moment in combat. Especially if they roleplay more or less than you do. Don't sit there and volunteer your ideas on decisions they should make, unless they freaking ask for it.

You're not the quarterback of the table. Let the players play their characters. So DMs, if you want to be more inclusive, I strongly encourage you to talk to your players about gatekeeping, what it looks like, how bad it is for the hobby as a whole. Set the expectations for your group and that everyone is welcome at the table. If their personality doesn't jibe with the group, that's a different thing. But make sure they feel welcome to try the game, learn the game at your table. thing, but make sure they feel welcome to try the game, learn the game at your table. Welcoming new players to your table, young or old, liberal or conservative, straight or gay,

bisexual, pansexual, or asexual, cis or trans, crusty gaming veteran or bright-eyed newbie, we should endeavor to A. Serve as positive ambassadors for the hobby we all love. B. Expand our world by interacting with people different than we are. And C. Maybe bring someone new into this wonderful hobby we enjoy. Thank you so much for listening to episode 41 about RPG gatekeeping. As you can see, it's a very passionate topic for me. I once again want to thank our sponsor, Guillotine's Barbershop, taking a little or a lot off the top. My name is Jeremy Shelley,

and I hope that your next game is your best game.