Stefan_Huddleston

WHEN WORLDS COLLABORATE: THE STYLE OF EARLY TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING
GAMES.
Stefan Huddleston
Hist 7690: The Global Sixties
May 1, 2020
1
Rolling the Dice: Introducing Tabletop Role-playing Games.
In 2019 the online show Critical Role sought to raise money to make an animated
television series based on the stream’s premise. For three to four hours each week the cast of
Critical Role live streams themselves playing the Tabletop Role-playing Game (TRPG)
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). After several Hollywood production companies rejected the
animation project, the cast turned to the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, hoping to raise
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars over one month. They achieved that six-figure goal in
under an hour, and the campaign eventually raised over eleven million dollars, making it the
sixth highest-grossing Kickstarter project, the second-highest in the games category, and number
one in the film and television category.1 These numbers illustrate the massive loyalty of fans who
watch a handful of people sit around a table and play a game. D&D premiered in 1974 as the first
example of a TRPG, preceding a range of imitators and derivatives in multiple genres.2 TRPGs
grew from humble beginnings into a major industry with broad social implications. Wizards of
the Coast, the owners of D&D, and a subsidiary of the popular game-maker Hasbro estimate that
around 40 million people have played the tabletop version of D&D over the last four and a half
decades.3 In the early 21st century, some scholars suggested that the heyday of TRPGs lay in the
past as Computer Roleplaying Games (CRPGs) gained increased prominence.4 However, such
predictions disregarded the future’s ability to alter historical trends as TRPGs, D&D in
particular, have seen a significant renaissance over the last five years since the release of the
1
“Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special,” Kicktraq.com.
https://www.kicktraq.com/projects /criticalrole/critical-role-the-legend-of-vox-machina-animated-s/.
2
The first edition of D&D did not refer to itself as a role-playing games and though there is some debate
over its placement as the first RPG, as Mason points out in his article “In Search of the Self,” such debates only
distract from larger issues.
3
J.R. Zambrano, “40 Million People Have Played D&D According to WotC,” BellofLostSouls.net (July 10,
2019), https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/07/40-million-people-play-dd-according-to-wotc.html.
4
Jon Peterson, Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from
Chess to Role-Playing Games, (San Diego, CA: Unreason Press LLC. 2012), xii.
2
game’s fifth edition in 2014. Wizards of the Coast reports a 30-50% growth in sales per year
since 2015, surpassing any previous edition of the game.5 In addition to the renewed popularity
of TRPGs, people familiar with computer games will recognize that many of the rules and tropes
of TRPGs formed the basis of popular games like Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, and other
influential titles in the multi-billion dollar video game industry. These factors showcase the
widespread cultural influence of tabletop role-playing.
Despite the contemporary gaming community's successes in creating space for diverse
players and perspectives, examining the early roots of the community as a subculture that was
dominated by white men provides vital insights. Placing these events into the context of the Long
Sixties and their aftermath, the early formation of a TRPG “style” emerged as a site in which
players engaged in a form of escapism that provided more control than the perceived chaos of
reality in the late 1970s. Though these fictional worlds may have fulfilled escapist desires, the
collaborative nature of TRPGs solidified an emergent “imagined community” of players who
also negotiated significant "real-world" issues within the development of a subcultural style of
TRPGs. By examining early discussions around race, gender, and the Vietnam War, we can see
that despite biases built into the style, there were also attempts to engage with those biases.
Using fanzines, personal reflections of my own experience as an African-American gamer since
the 1970s, and the games and ephemera themselves, this article will argue that there was a
distinct subcultural style of TRPGs that reflected and reinforced white male-dominated
boundaries, but that the collaborative nature of the games allowed for the negotiation of those
boundaries and ultimately, allowed for significant progress in the contemporary community.
5
Adam Rowe, “The Company Behind Dungeons & Dragons Grew Online Sales 53% Last Year,
Forbes.com, Feb 28, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2019/02/28/the-company-behind-dungeons-
dragons-grew-online-sales-53-last-year/#320e8b9f30ab.
3
Leveling Up: a new TRPG Methodology
Scholars debate the status of RPG participants subcultural status. As Dick Hebdige notes,
“the meaning of subculture is, then always in dispute” and that “culture is a notoriously
ambiguous concept.”6 Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style provides a framework for
studying how fans built and continue to shape a style for TRPG culture. Hebdige’s work looked
at the style of various aspects of youth Punk subcultures in the UK during the seventies, using a
Marxist and structuralist view to engage with the socioeconomic, racial, and class environment
of these groups. Hebdige also argues that his subjects were “cultures of conspicuous
consumption… and it is through the distinctive rituals of consumption, through style, that
subculture at once reveals its ‘secret’ identity and communicates its forbidden meanings.”7
Additionally, Hebdige used the term bricolage to describe how subculture took disparate
elements and appropriated them to from a style as with the “teddy boy’s theft and transformation
of the Edwardian style” or “Union jacks [that] were emblazoned on the back of grubby parka
anoraks.”8 However, Hebdige’s base idea of subcultural style, differs when applied to TRPG
players because their style does not represent their ideas, rather their ideas and creations became
their style. Unlike other subcultural groups, TRPG fans did not always don specific clothing or
accouterments; instead, they projected their style through their fictional creations. Pictures of the
young men who played these games show them wearing collared shirts, sweaters, and sometimes
ties.9 Nothing about their outward appearance distinguished them from other middle-class
American youths. Therefore, their style did not stem from a shared distinctive appearance that
differentiated them from mainstream culture in the sense that the Punk movement had a “look”
6
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, (London: Routledge, 1979), 3, 5.
7
Hebdige, Meaning of Style, 103.
8
Hebdige, Meaning of Style, 102-104.
9
Peterson, Playing at the World, 19, 37, 110,295, 563.
4
that appropriated Edwardian style or other elements that set them apart. Additionally, Hebdige’s
usage of the idea of bricolage, French for something created from a diverse range of things, also
fits the spectrum of disparate elements and ideas that contributed to the TRPG style. On the
surface, the confluence of race, gender, and the conflict in Vietnam might seem unrelated when
applied to the style of the RPGs that arose in the aftermath of the Long Sixties. However, these
seemingly unrelated components coalesced to contribute to the look and feel of early TRPGs.
These game realities offered a measure of control that the real world could not provide, and the
ingrained cultural biases of the predominant TRPG players in the seventies and eighties made
race and gender relevant in sometimes subtle but significant ways.
Other scholars continue to debate the role of subculture as a concept when applied to the
TRPG community. Gary Allen Fine, a sociologist who studied early TRPG players, identified
early them as a distinct sub-culture.10 Additionally, RPG scholar Jennifer Grouling Cover notes
that a “second wave of fandom scholars has been more careful about falling into binary thinking
and has sought to explicate fandom’s role within the dominant, capitalist system.”11 Other
scholars argue that “RPGs are not a niche subculture for a specific group of people– instead, they
have a broad reach throughout geek and leisure cultures.”12 To reframe subcultural critiques,
Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Aaron Trammell point out that Maria Consalvo proposes that the
10
Gary Allen Fine, Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983), 2-3.
11
Jennifer Grouling Cover, The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Game (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland and Company, Inc., 2010), 155.
12
Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Jaako Stenros, and Staffan Björk. "The Impact of Role-Playing Games on
Culture," In Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach, edited by Sebastian Deterding and José P.
Zagal,172-188, (New York: Routledge, 2018), 184; In agreement with avoiding hard binaries, I submit that while
TRPGs do influence wider culture they still possess attributes, terminology, and traditions that outsiders often
struggle to understand. In working on this project my peers often required further explanation of a wide range of
TRPG terms and concepts to contextualize my work. Even peers possessing some experience with geek culture,
CRPGS, and other things influenced by TRPG’s often missed some key elements because they did not understand
the terms and rituals of TRPGs.
5
term ‘Gaming Capital’ “contextualize[s] what RPG groups are doing and avoids some of the
assumptions about ‘subcultures’ having a physical aspect because gaming fans may never come
together fully.”13 These distinctions and efforts to avoid relegating subcultures to reductive
frameworks illustrate the complexities of defining the TRPG style.
RPG enthusiasts’ formation of a style also aligns with other cultural theories. Often
applied to film and television studies, reception theory engages with how audiences receive and
interpret media content. In “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Disclosure,” Stuart Hall
describes the way content creators encode content while audiences decode what they consume.
Hall’s work examines the semiotic codes contained in media and how cultures interpret those
codes based, in part, on an application of Gramsci’s work on ‘hegemonic’ and ‘corporate’
ideological formations.14 With film, television, or books, the encoding/ decoding dynamic
generally happens in one direction. A writer creates the content while fans receive and interpret
that content. However, in the case of things like fan fiction and TRPGs, the decoders reencode
the material, becoming a gestalt of encoder and decoder. Unlike fan faction authors, TRPG
players generally perform this reencoding as a group. However, in both cases, reencoded
material may go through a series of revisions as multiple fans or groups reinterpret the content.
Influential cultures can form without the need for a physical space similar to elements of Jürgen
Habermas’s concept of the Public Sphere as a "virtual or imaginary community which does not
necessarily exist in any identifiable space."15 Unlike Habermas’s body that forms to effect
political or social change, TRPG players created controllable, definable, fictional worlds. The
13
Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Aaron Trammell. "Role-Playing Games as Subculture and Fandom," In
Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach, edited by Sebastian Deterding and José P. Zagal, 364-378,
(New York: Routledge, 2018), 371.
14
Stuart Hall, “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse,” Centre of Cultural Studies.
University of Birmingham. (Sept. 1973), 16.
15
Marshall Soules, “Jürgen Habermas and the Public Sphere,” MediaStudies.ca, accessed Apr. 13, 2020.
http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/habermas.htm.
6
early TRPG style did not seek to create social change but rather fictional spaces, which gave
players the power to shape events beyond a physical location. For the TRPG community this
sharing of ideas also parallels what Eric Zolov called a “shared repertoire” that youth used in the
Long Sixties to link themselves “to each others struggles.”16 However, rather than sharing
“fashion statements, and music,” TRPG fans shared “imagery” through imaginary places and
personas.17 Therefore, the non-physical and fictional nature of their creative exchanges built a
style that parallels but does not mimic the styles of other subcultures. Hebdige’s ideas of style,
Hall’s roles of encoder and decoder, Zolov’s shared repertoire, and the non-physical aspect of
Habermas’s Public Sphere, highlight the path TRPG fans took in shaping their worlds, monsters,
and other materials to form their style. Fans developed an enduring legacy of shared creation that
manifested in a myriad of forms, though their biases established some unfortunate trends in the
shape of the nascent TRPG community.
The limited academic study of the first TRPGs in the context of the massive social
change of the sixties and seventies complicates historical examinations of this subject. However,
a few scholars have engaged with these games in a modern milieu, offering some critical
suggestions for further studies of TRPGs. Jennifer Grouling Cover’s, The Creation of Narrative
in Tabletop Role-Playing Games explores the cooperative construction of narratives in RPGs.
Cover uses her experiences playing TRPG’s to describe how players shape narratives in TRPGs.
She also posits that “with so little scholarship currently available on the tabletop role-playing
games (TRPG), we must first ask how we should define and study it.”18 Cover also argues “that
16
Eric Zolov, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture, (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1999), 15.
17
Eric Zolov, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture, (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1999), 15.
18
Jennifer Grouling Cover, The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Game, (Jefferson, NC:
7
TRPGs cannot be subsumed under the study of other games, particularly computer games, nor
should they occupy a position of prior and inferior text.”19 As she denotes, the relatively few
academic studies of RPGs tend to assess their many variations, TRPGs, Live-Action Role-
Playing Games (LARPs), and particularly CRPGs as a single entity. In fact, many of the critiques
about whether to classify RPG enthusiasts as a subculture, such as their “broad reach” or their
lack of coming “together fully,” address the entire RPG community and not its distinctive groups
like TRPG players.20 Though all RPGs share the same roots and similar themes, Cover suggests
“too often we focus on the newest example of a genre, the latest technological advance, and we
forward a myth that each new change constitutes a more advanced form of discourse….”21
Significantly, Cover engages with TRPGs as a distinct community, separate from the other forms
of RPGs that followed. Additionally, Cover introduces some fundamental topologies that inform
my thesis, stating that they represent “sliding scales rather than binaries.”22 First, she describes
“the dual nature of fans as consumers and producers,”23 however, she notes TRPG fans tend to
reside somewhere in the middle of a spectrum rather than at opposite poles. Second, she
proposes the designation of the community-oriented fan, opposed by the individual fan, with the
latter having little or no contact with the gaming community beyond their gaming group, while
19
20
Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Jaako Stenros, and Staffan Björk. "The Impact of Role-Playing Games on
Culture," In Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach, edited by Sebastian Deterding and José P.
Zagal,172-188, (New York: Routledge, 2018), 184; Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Aaron Trammell. "Role-Playing
Games as Subculture and Fandom," In Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach, edited by Sebastian
Deterding and José P. Zagal, 364-378, (New York: Routledge, 2018), 371.
21
22
23
8
the former actively participates in that community.24 Cover’s work suggests a foundation for how
community-oriented fans, acting as constant encoders and decoders, drove the formation TRPG
style.
Shortly after the first TRPGs began to become popular, Gary Alan Fine performed an
ethnography of RPGs and recorded his findings in the 1983 monograph Shared Fantasy: Role
Playing Games as Social Worlds. Fine participated in several sessions of multiple games,
conducted personal interviews, and compiled a wealth of data on the people who play these
games. He used his data to define the social structures and frameworks that form around TRPGs.
By playing with multiple groups near the dawn of TRPGs as a hobby, the timing of Fine’s work
casts it simultaneously as a useful secondary and a primary source. Concluding that TRPG
players fit the sociological definition of a subculture, Fine argued these groups had real-world
social value, and they constituted a non-delusional form of a Folie à deux, or shared psychosis,
as players and gamemasters constructed a shared escapist fantasy world.25 Fine’s field notes and
interviews offer excellent insight into the players’ attraction to these games. He also engaged
with individual groups and participated in some large gaming clubs, so his observations help
explain the development of some vital elements of the TRPG style. Fine’s work also helps to
illustrate the drive for players to create and play in worlds they could shape control though Folie
à deux. Furthermore, Fine describes the behavior and attitudes of some players that may help
explain why women made up such a small percentage of TRPG hobbyists in the mid to late
seventies. 26 Though little direct data exists, anecdotal and photographic evidence suggests that
24
25
Fine, Shared Fantasy, 12, 236-37, 240-41.
26
Differing datasets suggest that women made up less than 5% of TRPG player, while one anecdotal
account from Gary Gygax places the number at between 10-15%, Fine 40-41.
9
the ethnic makeup of early players similarly lacked diversity. The ethnic and gender composition
of these groups may help inform the creation and formation of the groups that played TRPGs in
their first decade of existence. Fine’s study and his participatory observations illustrate how one
aspect of bricolage, namely the privilege of white men, contributed to early the TRPG style.
Most historical examinations of TRPGs fall into the popular history category, often
written by amateur academics. Jon Peterson’s 2012 book Playing at the World: A History of
Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games,
chronicles the origins of TRPGs and CRPGs by tracing their roots to chess and its descendants.
Peterson’s work does not seek to understand why RPGs appeared but largely adheres to
“verifiable” facts and makes no historical arguments. Peterson’s only argument suggests that
TRPGs saw their peak decades before he wrote his monograph, and he concludes that their
legacy primarily endures as the basis for the more popular CRPG category.27 Interestingly,
Peterson published his work two years before a resurgence that catapulted D&D to the best sales
figures in its history.28 The book eschews the use of any personal interviews, citing divisiveness
over the creation of D&D that still divides fans in the twenty-first century. For this reason, the
majority of Peterson’s monograph focuses on the prolific fan output in fan magazines published
before 1976.29 Peterson further suggests that the murkiness over the game’s creation makes
fanzines published after 1980 unreliable as sources on the game’s formation. However, he never
explains how the schism over D&D negates the effectiveness of articles related to other games,
nor does he address how the tracing of any errors in facts in post-1980 publications might shed
27
Peterson, Playing at the World, xii, 616-32.
28
Sarah Whitten, “Dungeons and Dragons’ has found something its early fans never expected: Popularity,”
CNBC.com, Mar. 16, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/dungeons-and-dragons-is-more-popular-than-ever-
thanks-to-twitch.html.
29
Peterson, Playing at the World, xiv.
10
light on how the schism shaped the hobby.30 Peterson did perform extensive research with
difficult to cite, fan-made sources that often lack page numbers or other information to orient
follow up study. His examination of the chronological development of TRPGs includes several
vital quotes from multiple game fanzines, including many in private collections unavailable
elsewhere. Peterson’s work offers a solid foundation for academic histories seeking to make a
historical argument.31
Peterson’s work also inspired several social science scholars from various disciplines to
compile the edited volume Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach, to examine the
impact of TRPGS, CRPGS, and Live-Action Role-Playing Games (LARPs). Though the
transmedia approach mostly engages with the commonalities between CRPGs, LARPs, and
TRPGs, often without acknowledging or addressing their distinctive qualities, this edited volume
contains several articles that help orient RPGs within academia. Though none of the pieces use a
historical approach, the volume includes the first peer-reviewed work on RPGs from a range of
perspectives, including “The Many Face of Role-Playing Games,” “Definitions of “Role-Playing
Games,” “The Impact of Role-Playing Games on Culture,” “Sociology and Role-Playing
Games,” “Literary Studies and Role-Playing Games,” “Role Playing Games as Subculture and
Fandom,” “Players and Their Characters in Role-Playing Games,” “Representation and
Discrimination in Role-Playing Games,” and “Power and Control In Role-Playing Games.”32
30
Peterson, Playing at the World, xv-xvi.
31
The scattered locales and often private nature of the archives Peterson used makes access a challenge.
These archives have not been digitized, further limiting access. Additionally, the lockdowns surrounding COVID-19
negated any chance that I might access these archives with sufficient leeway to complete this thesis in the required
time frame. Therefore, under extraordinary circumstances I rely heavily on Peterson’s extensive quotation of
primary sources. Many of these fan-made publications lack page numbers.
32
All in Zagal, José P. and Sebastian Deterding, editors. Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia
Approach, (New York: Routledge, 2018).
11
Each of these works helps frame RPGs as a basis for academic study that the genre lacked before
this volume.
Several other works address RPGs from the perspective of other academic disciplines,
offering other frameworks to aid in historical understanding. Importantly, none of these works
ask or attempt to answer with historical questions about the development of TRPGs. Sarah
Lynne Bowman’s The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community,
Solve Problems and Explore Identity helps situate the academic relevance and endurance of the
RPG genre. Like other works on RPGs Bowman’s study on the psychological and sociological
functions these games serve highlights the need for a historical examination that integrates the
timing of RPG’s appearance in entertainment culture. Other popular histories of RPGs such as
The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Game by Michael J. Tresca and of Dice and Men: The
Story of Dungeons and Dragons and the People Who Play It by David M Ewalt vacillate
between discussing the supersession of TRPGs by CRPGs (Tresca) to serving as nostalgic
memoirs of the author’s experience with RPGs (Ewalt). These works, like others in the field, do
not seek to understand any external social or cultural influences that shaped or defined TRPGs,
beyond direct influences such as Tolkien or other fictional works. However, each of these
monographs also offers the author’s perspective on the beneficial aspects of TRPG.
In this article, I take a slightly non-traditional approach to primary sources and
methodology. I will use the rule books that detail the playing of multiple TRPGs as sources
alongside fan publications to aid in understanding these games as part of developing the TRPG
style. These rulebooks offer crucial insight into the mindset of the creators and players of these
games. Presumably, TRPG rule books have been ignored for their primary source value because
many early examples lack prose and narrative in favor of rules. Yet these rules laid the
12
groundwork for the shaping of imagined places, offering understanding into the how and why
these settings developed as they did. For this discussion, I will analyze the books for the original
D&D, and its immediate successor Advanced Dungeon and Dragons (AD&D) including the
three books of the original D&D boxed set (1974), Basic Dungeons and Dragons (1977) the
AD&D Player’s Handbook (1978), and the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979).
Additionally, I will also examine the 1977 TRPG Traveller,33a science fiction game in the vein
of Star Trek and Star Wars that represents one of the first competitors to D&D in the TRPG
genre, as well as the 1975 game Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, created by linguistics
professor M.A.R. Barker. Along with a handful of other games, derivatives, and supplements, I
also reviewed the first one hundred and ten issues of Dragon magazine, the house organ of the
company that created D&D, with publication dates of June 1976 to June 1986.34
Increased popularity in recent years notwithstanding, TRPG’s niche status requires an
explanation of some key concepts to help orient uninitiated readers. In most TRPGs, a single
person, known as the Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM),35 acts as a referee and
worldbuilder working to lead, or “run,” a group of players through adventures in a fictional
setting. In the case of D&D these fantasy worlds take significant inspiration from the works of J.
R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. These adventures occur
in the minds of the players and the GM, with the latter describing the setting somewhat like a
narrator in a radio drama. Traditionally the GM and players sit around a table, hence tabletop,
33
The game uses the British spelling.
34
The magazine began under the name The Dragon but dropped the definite article on the cover with issue
#40 and removed it from the in the internal header in issue #42 becoming just Dragon thereafter.
35
The referee is often called the Dungeon Master, or DM, in D&D. Officially, other games might use terms
like Keeper or Storyteller and all these terms, including DM, fall under the generic term Gamemaster, or GM, that
many games use to describe the person how facilitates or runs the game. Therefore, when referring to D&D the term
DM is generally preferred while GM can refer to the ‘referee’ for any game. However, D&D’s preeminence as the
most popular RPG means that DM has become genericized by some fans to apply to any game. I will use GM,
except when specifically referring to D&D.
13
though in recent years, several internet platforms with options for video and voice connections
and the sharing of resources like pictures and maps have presented new gameplay options.36 The
GM also acts as an omnipotent judge of the setting, playing, or acting out the words and actions
of the other people the players' characters (PCs)37 meet, also known as non-player characters
(NPCs). NPCs can fill the role of antagonists, allies, or simply serve as “extras,” populating the
game’s setting. GM’s also control and sometimes create the nations, regional laws, alliances,
economies, and nearly every other detail of the fictional world the characters inhabit. However,
in some cases, GMs use pre-made adventures or settings, leaving them to fill in any details that
the generalities these pre-made books do not address. Additionally, the GM arbitrates the rules of
the games and ostensibly makes the final decision on the interpretation of rules.
Conversely, the players each create a fictional character in much the same manner one
might perform in a play or film. However, characters in an RPG generally incorporate extensive
details, often based on numerical scales, that rate their proficiency at a range of tasks or
aptitudes. These details usually include physical and mental attributes like strength, dexterity,
constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma.38 D&D, for example, rates these attributes on a
scale of 3-18 (the possible range rolled on three six-sided dice) with three representing a poor
aptitude in that category and eighteen representing the peak of human performance.39 Thus, a
character with a three strength equates to an infant, while a character with an eighteen equates to
an Olympic powerlifter. These primary attributes pair with other secondary attributes such as hit
points (HP) that define how much damage a character can take before death, or Armor Class
36
Despite the rise of technological alternatives, such as digital character sheets TRPG are still often called
“pen and paper” games in deference to their origins.
37
In RPG vernacular PCs are usually called “player characters,” not “the players’ characters.”
38
D&D uses these six primary attributes though other games may use more or fewer attributes with similar
or different names and purposes.
14
(AC) that rates the difficulty of striking a character in combat. Other games and later editions of
D&D added the concept of skills to simulate a character’s proficiency at tasks like detecting
whether an NPC is lying, locating a hidden object, or understanding a scientific formula. These
values couple with decisions made by the players, acting as their characters, and the GM
managing the rest of the world, to simulate a “realistic” fictional world.40
The level of detail in RPGs complicates study by requiring a level of intimate knowledge
with the subject matter, making examinations difficult for those lacking such knowledge. This
inside knowledge informs debate over the status of the RPG community, and specific RPG
communities as subcultures. Though a concept like Gaming Capital does explain certain aspects
of TRPGs, like a person having more knowledge of a game assisting less experienced players,
the term falls short of explaining player collaboration as imaginary world builders. While other
types of RPGs such as CRPGs can encompass complex lore and rules, TRPGs hold a unique
place in the volumes of lore and rules that might exist. While certain aspects of RPG culture have
crossed into popular culture via CRPGs, other elements might mystify those familiar with many
CRPGs. Though some popular TRPGs like Vampire: the Masquerade have seen multiple
computer versions that might allow computer gamers to recognize in-game concepts like
Diablerie or Rötschreck, the particulars of many TRPGs require a deep understanding of the lore
and rules of these games. For example, the RPGs Vampire: the Masquerade and Exalted each
encompass over one hundred books and supplements containing various degrees of “crunch,” or
rules and systems, and “fluff,” or setting material and lore.41 Fan’s understanding of these details
40
The debate over the level of realism that exists, or should exist, in TRPGs remains a never-ending topic
for RPG enthusiasts, especially given the many impossibilities such as dragons, magic, or ultra-advanced
technologies well beyond the understanding of current science found in many TRPGs. Some players prefer a more
“realistic” game, while others seek a more “cinematic” feel where characters mimic 80s action heroes able to
weather waves of gun fire, or other dangers with barely a scratch.
41
D&D has nearly 400 official books and supplements and considerably more unofficial publications.
15
lies at the root of a continually evolving cultural exchange of fictional worlds that make internal
insight a vital component of RPG studies. These distinctions also serve as a boundary of the
TRPG subculture. However, this knowledge lacks universality because a fan of one game may
have little or no knowledge of another, allowing for cliques formed around a single game, or a
series of interrelated games. This insider knowledge played a role in constructing the early
TRPG style, as we shall see players’ usage of Tolkien, Howard, and other inspirations
contributed to their own biases to develop a style that favored white men.
These boundaries also mean that members of the RPG community produce most of the
scholarly work on RPGs. Setting a precedent, Fine chose to use participatory observations of the
RPG community to conduct his landmark study on the sociological implications of RPGs shortly
after their creation. As Cover explains, “researchers who have experience with a gaming
community are in a better position to conduct studies than those who are not.”42 Cover further
outlines the tradition of RPG researchers utilizing their experience within the community in their
studies.43 These distinctions speak to the sub-culture of RPGs, which requires specialized
internal knowledge to understand and assess. However, where CRPGs have received extensive
study, participants or fans conducted every academic examination I found in my research of
TRPGs. These choices imply that currently, only insiders who understand the community’s
values and share a sense of cohesiveness bother to engage in TRPG studies. To reify this trend of
scholar-fans studying RPGs, Evan Troner coined the phrase Aca-Fan to describe “an academic
scholar who self-identifies as a fan of their topic of study, to distinguish scholarly work from the
bevy of fan theorizing that does not meet academic standards.”44 To align with my predecessors
42
Cover, Creation of Narrative, 13.
43
Cover, Creation of Narrative, 13.
44
Evan Torner, “RPG Theorizing by Designers and Players,” In Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia
Approach, edited by José P. Zagal and Sebastian Deterding, (New York: Routledge, 2018), 192.
16
in the field, I also self-identify as a fan of RPGs. While I have played multiple Live-Action Role-
playing Games (LARPs), CRPGs, and Massively Multi-player Online Role-playing Games
(MMORPGs), I am a passionate life-long fan of TRPGs. I began playing D&D in 1977 and have
played, GMed, or collected and read well over 200 distinct RPGs across a range of genres. At the
peak of my RPG activity in my teens and twenties, I played TRPGs an average of 16 hours a
week. Currently, I play or run RPGs for an average of 8 hours a week, and I spend a great deal of
my free time watching RPG related streams and reading RPG publications, blogs, and forums.45
The trend of fans acting as the sole contributors to RPGs studies raises the question of whether
those outside the community could hope to satisfactorily analyze or produce any academic
output on RPGs. However, awareness of this issue should permit insiders to offer information
that, while unnecessary for TRPG experts can guide newcomers or those with any level of
connection to the hobby.
Defining a period for the early TRPG style proves challenging as many of its elements
like Eurocentrism remain entrenched in the hobby. However, by the late eighties, the hobby had
begun to make strides to recognize other cultures in ways that, while still problematic,
acknowledged that other demographics. The formation of the early TRPG style began in the late
sixties and early seventies as Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and others began work on the
progenitors of D&D. The founding of the organization Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons
(BADD) by Patricia Pulling in 1982 represents a key juncture temporally defining early TRPGs.
When Pulling’s son Irving committed suicide, she blamed D&D as a root cause, claiming it
encouraged demon worship, murder, sexual perversion, blasphemy, rape, Satanism, and a host of
45
In keeping with the work of other RPG scholars and so as not to overstate the efficacy of my RPG
experiences I will highlight the ways my experiences fit into my argument, not vice versa.
17
other sins.46 Pulling went on a national crusade against D&D, even appearing on 60 Minutes in
1985. Through her efforts did not harm sales of D&D,47 it did have a wider impact by making the
TRPG community keenly aware of external scrutiny encouraging to enthusiasts to reassess
perceptions of their hobby by outsiders. In the wake of Pulling’s actions and others who followed
in her footsteps game publisher Palladium began placing disclaimers in the front of all its RPG
titles. One such disclaimer in the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game read, “The inclusion of
magic is simply a service to create the wondrous world of classic heroic and fantasy literature,
ALL of us a Palladium Books ® condemn the belief and practice of the occult.”48 D&D also
showed the influence of external criticism when the game began referring to demons and devils
by the wholly fictional terms Tanar’ri and Baatezu for its 2nd edition.49 These reactions signify a
shift for the TRPG community as it realized how outsiders might interpret their creations. The
increased scrutiny as a result of BADD caused TRPG players to consider what their style looked
like to outsiders, and as we shall see, the eighties saw the implementation of changes in the
treatment of marginalized groups in the worlds TRPG fans made. Therefore, while an exact date
remains elusive the late eighties mark a transitional period away from the early TRPG style.
46
David Waldron, "Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a
Moral Panic." Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. 9 no. 1, Spring 2005, pp. 3-3 https://doi.org/10.3138
/jrpc.9.1.003, 3.
47
Peterson 601.
48
Kevin Siembieda, Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game, revised edition 5th printing, (Detroit, MI:
Palladium Books, 1988), ii.
49
Paul J. LaFountain, Advanced Dungeon and Dragons 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium: Outer Planes
Appendix, (Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Inc. 1991) np. Note the second edition Monstrous Compendiums were produced
in a loose-leaf format without page numbers, however this change can be found in the introduction of the referenced
source.
18
By this Pen, I Rule: The style of fictional worlds as a response to the Long Sixties.50
To understand the formation of the early TRPG style and the community-oriented fans
who continually received and reencoded this style, the demographics of early fans prove vital.51
Despite creating fictional worlds,
gamers52 used the tools and
knowledge they had at hand. Most
early TRPGs presented male-
dominated and Eurocentric settings,
hardly shocking given that the
players and creators of wargames,
and thus early RPG’s, were almost
exclusively “white, male, middle-
class American youths.”53 Early
enthusiasts took a great deal of
inspiration from the works of
authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and

Fig. 1 Tolkien’s Middle Earth.54
50
With apologies to Robert E Howard whose fantasy yarn “By this Axe I Rule” I used to derive this
header.
51
Other studies have highlighted the benefits of the early TRPGs. These games often require the
construction of narratives that involve the development of writing skills, they include problem solving and
cooperation that enhances critical thinking skills, and they often involve at least basic math skills, though some
games do involve some more advanced math. However, due to the length of this study I will confine myself to
examining some of the less appealing aspects of the way early TRPGs fans formed their style. See Ewalt, Cover,
Tresca, Peterson, Bowman and Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach for more on the benefits of
TRPGs.
52
Though the term gamer has come to refer to those who play computer games the term was used within
the TRPG community to refer to themselves, even as computer games were coming into their own. For my purposes
I will use the term to refer exclusively to those who participate in TRPGs. For more see the fan made TRPG film
series, The Gamers by Dead Gentlemen productions, The Gamers (2002), The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (2008), The
Gamers: The Shadow Menace (2015).
53
Peterson, Playing at the World, 111.
19
Robert E. Howard, tales similarly rooted in Eurocentrism. Maps of Tolkien’s Middle Earth (Fig.
1 above) and Howard’s Hyborian world (Fig. 2) present settings where the European analog rests
on the west coast of an ocean, while dark and mysterious analogs of Africa and Asia lay to the
Fig. 2 Howard’s Hyborian Age.54
south and east in an occidental-oriental relationship.54
Howard’s framed his setting as a lost age of Earth where he could tell tales in equivalents
of Europe, Africa, and Asia without the need for historical research or fear of anachronisms.55
Such reasoning aside, these choices influenced D&D and its variants as both D&D’s Forgotten
54
“Map of Middle-earth - J.R.R. Tolkien,” TheOneRing.com, accessed April 4, 2020, http://www.theonering.com
/galleries/maps-calendars-genealogies/maps-calendars-genealogies/map-of-middle-earth-j-r-r-tolkien; Ian Sturrock,
Conan: the Role-Playing Game, (Swindon, UK: Mongoose Publishing, 2004), inside rear cover. See Appendix A
Fig 1and 2
55
Patrice Louinet, “Hyborian Genesis Part I,” The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, (New York: Del Rey Books,
2002), 434.
20
Fig. 3 The world of Abeir-Toril (The Forgotten Realms).56

Realms(1987) setting (Fig. 3) and the world of Golarion (Fig.4 below), the setting of the D&D
variant Pathfinder(2009), both follow Howard’s model and demonstrate the continued
pervasiveness of European equivalents as default settings.56 Seemingly innocent
choices like these made Europe and people who looked like Europeans, the model for fantasy
TRPG settings. Each of these settings make a statement by situating a European analog in a
geographically familiar location, while a Japan/China equivalent resides in the far east, a land of
jungles with dark-skinned inhabitants exists to the south, and a region ripped from the Arabian
Nights borders the Africa analog.57 Such arrangements make orienting newcomers easier by
giving them familiar thematic landmarks. From a thematic standpoint, Howard’s Khitai,
56
Ed Greenwood, Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, (Renton, WA: Wizards of
the Coast, 2001), 415; Logan Bonner, et. al. Pathfinder 2nd edition. Redmond (WA: Paizo Publishing, 2019), 231.
57
Ed Greenwood, Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, Renton, (WA: Wizards of
the Coast, 2001) 231; Logan Bonner et. al., Pathfinder 2nd edition, (Redmond, WA: Paizo Publishing, 2019), 416.
See Appendix A Fig 3 and 4.
21
Pathfinder’s Tian Xia,
and Kara-Tur in The
Forgotten Realms
comprise a blend of
China and Japan with
some traits from other
parts of Southeast Asia.
However, these devices
deployed stereotypes
that established and
entrenched a style that
favored the white male
players of these games
with worlds where light

Fig. 4 Golarion from Pathfinder.56
skin and Eurocentric
tropes were the norm, while presenting exceptions to these tropes as different and exotic. For
example, advertising for the original Oriental Adventures supplement set in Kara-Tur (Fig .5
below) promised exploits “in the mysterious East,”58 marking “Oriental” lands a distinctly exotic
in comparison to European norms. Therefore, gender, race, and the placement of “the Other”
demarcate of how TRPG fans made style choices during the hobby’s formative years. Situating
the many diverse elements that comprised the early RPG style also necessitates an understanding
of some of the precursors to the sharing of fictional worlds.
58
Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief, [advertisement for Oriental Adventures], Dragon no. 102 (Oct 1985): 31.
22
The drive to create and share the
fruits of their labors existed among science
fiction, and fantasy fans well before TRPGs
appeared. TRPG fans did not invent the
sharing of fan content, though a brief
explanation of precursors reifies how fans
shared their ideas and how some major
events shaped their thinking. Writing
groups where fans shared and stories,
sometimes in a common world, cropped up
across the United States in the Long Sixties.
The sixties saw the rise of multiple
Amateur Press Associations (APAs), where
a single person or a small group compiled

Fig. 5 Advertisement in Dragon 102.58
and collated stories and material that had
been written by members of the APA and then distributes the compiled volumes to the group’s
members. Though the first APA formed in 1876 and the first science fiction APA premiered in
1937, the Long Sixties and beyond saw an increase in the popularity of these groups, with the
first two weekly APAs appearing in the early to mid-sixties. APA-L, the APA of the Los
Angeles Science Fiction Fantasy Society (LASFS), premiered in 1964 as the second weekly
APA.59 The Long Sixties also saw changes in how people accessed fantasy and science fiction
fandoms. An unauthorized reprinting of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in 1964 spawned new wide-
59
Lee Gold, Transcription of Personal notes related to APA-L. Received via email Jan. 31, 2020.
23
spread interest in fantasy among college students.60 Groups like the Coventry shared fictional
settings that began in the late fifties and The Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval
reenactment group formed in 1964, all arose in a time of dynamic social change.61 Certainly,
APAs and other collaborative fan efforts existed well before the sixties, but the sixties saw a
myriad of new examples of the ways and methods that people used to share their fan-based ideas.
This idea sharing served as a core component of the early TRPG style and helps explain how
certain tropes such violence against women and the situation of casting non-European cultures as
exotic and unusual became staples in many early games.
The design and production of TRPGs also contributed to their style. For RPG enthusiasts,
the books that contained the rules for play or the lore of a setting acted as canon that demarcated
the acceptable modifications or additions that someone wishing to reencode the text might make.
These books also established what or how much an enthusiast might choose to modify given the
text's complexity, readability, or other factors. The three books contained in the original D&D
boxed set each contained less than forty pages of rules, while the early science fiction RPG
Traveller consisted of three books of forty-four pages of rules with only a single illustration
between them, far less than modern RPG’s that can contain between two hundred and six
hundred pages. Early TRPG designers had not yet considered the many situations that might
occur over the course of a game where imagination was the only boundary. In a symposium from
2012 Paul Mason points out:
The impenetrable rules forced players to invent their own rules and interpretations, and
begin thinking about rules systems and their design, it was here that future game
designers were being born. Secondly, players were not focusing on the game itself, but
the idea behind the game. Though the rules were far from perfect, people recognised the
potential of the new and incredible concept around which the game revolved. D&D is
60
Mike Foster, "America in the 1960s: Reception of Tolkien," In J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship
and Critical Assessment, edited by Michael D. C. Drout, 14-15. (New York: Routledge, 2007) 14.
61
Peterson, Playing at the World, 394-396, 428-425.
24
perhaps the first game that players purchased with the knowledge that at least half the
rules would have to be discarded or seriously altered.62
In my own experience, the groups I played with in the late seventies and early eighties rarely
played games without modifying the rules in some fashion. Some rules did not work, some failed
to make sense, and others bogged down gameplay or simply were not fun. Mason’s symposium
demonstrates the ubiquity of my experiences silicifying his argument that fans play a vital role in
shaping RPGs. These collaborative efforts add another layer to the style of fictional worlds
spawned by early RPGs.
As Mason notes, the lack of specificity in several areas forced RPG players to
collaborate to address unanswered questions. Some players simply answered these questions
within their games, but those who chose to create and collaborate with their peers added another
component of bricolage to the style of TRPGs. When Dungeon and Dragons premiered as the
first TRPG, the game featured sparse rules that did not anticipate the range of eventualities that
might occur within the game. Alarums & Excursions grew out of APA-L when the founder of the
latter document encouraged Lee Gold to start a D&D APA because Role-playing discussions
over changes to the game dominated the content of APA-L.63 The notes of female D&D pioneer
Lee Gold taken from APA-L issues 493-537, from October 1974 until around June of 1975,
show only a handful of entries unrelated to D&D. Players quickly moved to address D&D’s
perceived shortcomings for themselves, opening a debate about the ‘true’ version of the game.
Gygax held that the games should be played a certain way and often disparaged those who defied
62
Paul Mason, “A History of RPGs: Made by Fans; Played by Fans.” Transformative Works and Cultures,
no. 11, 2012, http://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0444, 3.3.
63
Lee Gold, Transcription of Personal notes related to APA-L. Received via email Jan. 31, 2020.
25
his vision in personal letters or comments sent to fanzines.64 Though Gygax touted in the D&D
APA, Alarums & Excursions (A&E) that “I desire variance in interpretation and… I will do my
utmost to see that there is as little trend towards standardization as possible” his actions did not
align with his words.65 Gygax published standardized magic rules even though several groups
already used their own variant magic rules, causing one fan to respond in A&E #11 “I’ll never
play Gygax’s [version of] D&D.”66 As Mason explains, a fear existed among early designers like
Gygax that without clear rules, many fan’s homemade innovations risked the formation of
different and incompatible rules. The fear held that these variants made exchanges, of content
like a monster or magic item from one group to another difficult, if not impossible.67 In his
symposium piece, Mason convincingly argues that these fans and contributors become the game
designers of subsequent years.68 More importantly, these entries demonstrate how early fans
shared ideas and rules to form a style.
The lack of clear details or suggestions on methods and approaches for playing the game
forced fans to determine the trajectory of their fictional worlds and collaborations as another
element of bricolage. One commenter from MIT noted that Alarums and Excursions served as a
“reasonable substitute” claiming the fan organ had “better monsters” and “more words” than the
core D&D rules.69 In filling perceived as gaps fan generated elements that developed into staples
of the game like the Thief and Ranger classes, which came from fans who spoke to the game’s
creators or published their creations in fan media.70 The Illusionist and Bard also came from fans
64
Paul Mason, “A Survey of the First 25 Years of Anglo-American Role-Playing Game Theory,” In
Beyond Role and Play Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination, edited by Markus Montola and
Jaakko Stenros, (Helsinki: Ropecon ry, 2004), 2-3.
65
“Alarums and Excursions #2” qtd in Peterson, Playing at the World, 551.
66
“Alarums and Excursions #11” qtd in Peterson, Playing at the World, 551.
67
Mason, “Beyond Role and Play,” 2.
68
Mason symposium.
69
“Alarums and Excursions #8” qtd in Peterson, Playing at the World, Peterson, 540.
70
26
who saw a chance to modify existing material.71 Though fans could have made these additions to
the game and kept them for personal use, and we can imagine many fans did, the sharing of these
ideas so that other fans could adopt or modify them exemplifies a cooperative spirit.
Significantly, fans did not display unquestioning devotion and certainly challenged many details
of the game, such as the stipulation that Cleric characters could not be of a neutral alignment.72
Their collaborative ideas were not rooted in a consensus but rather in an ongoing exchange that
caused the game to grow and spawn new ideas expanding the scope of the early TRPG style.
While any new product that captures the imagination may spawn clones, several of
D&D’s imitators came directly from fans trying to make sense of the game’s bare-bones rules.
The makers of the rival TRPG Runequest noted that their game began because many of the
people they played with had different interpretations of D&D and that their alterations led them
to “publish our own game.”73 The efforts of eager fans to create caused the fledgling TSR to
voraciously defend its copyright by sending various cease and desist orders or letters to fans who
did anything the company feared might allow for derivatives of their ideas. One fan who wrote
Gygax requesting permission to ‘xerox’ copies of some useful tables for D&D for personal use
and not profit received a flat denial in a curt response from the game designer. The fan responded
in the October 1976 issue of The Dragon, “you’re not providing effective products for
enthusiasts of your game: it seems you are doing a disservice to your loyal customers by
preventing others from providing these products as long as they are not trying to make a
profit.”74 By not offering alternatives for fans who sought to improve the D&D games their
group played, Gygax opened the door for them to share and collaborate. His attempts to defend
71
Peterson, Playing at the World, 538, 543.
72
73
“Alarums and Excursions #161” qtd in Peterson, Playing at the World, Peterson 570.
74
Scott Rosenburg, [Letter to the Editor] The Dragon, no. 3, (Oct 1976), 20.
27
TSR’s intellectual property and his often inflexible stance on how fans played led some fans to
take up the slogan “D&D is too important to leave to Gary Gygax.”75 If every player had decided
to reencode D&D solely for personal use, then the hobby may have evolved differently, but fans
took TSR’s stance as a clarion call to make games other than D&D. These collaborations made
players and fans more than just a group of people who played the same game, it made them a
community. Unlike people sharing their experiences of playing a game like Monopoly, TRPG
players from separate games or groups possess the ability to share their experiences of visiting
the same fictional places or meeting the same NPCs, thus forming a connection via Folie à deux
and the shared repertoire of mythic locales. These connected experiences gave players a greater
sense of their role as builders of fictional worlds. Gygax’s protective attitude and rigid view of
D&D paved the way for Tunnels and Trolls, Runequest, and a host of other games.76 Though
fans quibbled about the rules to the point that some designed new games, a commonality of
inspirations and biases contributed to two key pieces of bricolage in the style they projected
through their creations, namely how they engaged with gender and race.
Though some very influential women contributed to shaping early TRPGs, their numbers
remained small for several years as male bias formed a vital arm of the TRPG style. Peterson
recounts how one commentator questioned what “women’s libbers think" of the shortage of
meaningful and roles for female characters in D&D, to which Gygax responded that he “will
bend to their demands when a member of the opposite sex buys a copy of Dungeons &
Dragons.”77 An article in the third issue of TSR house organ The Dragon further highlights the
way the TRPG style initially framed women. “Notes on Women & Magic- Bringing the Distaff
75
Ted Johnstone in APA-L #523; Lee Gold, Transcription of Personal notes related to APA-L. Received via email
Jan. 31, 2020.
76
Peterson, Playing at the World, 556, 570.
77
Peterson, Playing at the World, 472,
28
Gamer into D&D,”78 contained rules for adding female characters to D&D, which had previously
only allowed for male characters. The new rules included switching the “Charisma” attribute to
“Beauty” for females, thereby allowing those with an exceptional beauty score to use the
“Seduction” spell, while “ugly” or “grotesque” females could make use of the “Horrid Beauty”
spell to possibly scare weaker targets “to death.”79 These rules defined females by their
appearance in ways that were not applied to male characters. Gygax also showed his awareness,
and perhaps disdain, for gender issues when he noted in the Dungeon Master’s Guide that in his
world of Greyhawk “all player characters are freemen or gentlemen” and further that “the
masculine/human usage is generic” as he did “not like the terms freecreatures or gentlebeings!”80
With the excuse of adhering to linguistic tradition, Gygax excised gender and race from
intruding on his male-dominated, Euro-centric world. While some might question whether
Gygax’s writing came as a result of blissful ignorance of alternatives to placing male and
European norms at the center of D&D, on the next page he offered a list of “Government Forms”
and another of “Royal and Noble Titles,” that negates such inquiries.81 These lists include the
definitions “Gynarchy– Government by females only,” and “Matriarchy– Government by the
eldest females of whatever social units exist,” along with several social titles taken from Asian
cultures, including “Sultan, Bey, Padishah, Rajah, and Kha-Khan.”82 The TRPG style presented
female characters, Asian titles, and female led governments characters as novel alternatives, not
viable norms.
78
Len Lakofka, “Notes on Women & Magic- Bringing the Distaff Gamer into D&D,” The Dragon, no. 3,
(Oct 1976), 7-10.
79
Len Lakofka, “Notes on Women & Magic- Bringing the Distaff Gamer into D&D,” The Dragon, no. 3,
(Oct 1976), 7-10.
80
Gary Gygax, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Dungeon Master’s Guide. (Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical
Studies Rules, 1979), 88.
81
Gary Gygax, Dungeon Master’s Guide, 89.
82
Gary Gygax, Dungeon Master’s Guide, 89.
29
The TRPG style situated females
as the Other in images and rules. Further
examinations of various books that
comprised the original version of D&D
only mention female characters in
passing, a situation “Notes on Women &
Magic- Bringing the Distaff Gamer into
D&D” apparently sought to address. The
first book of the original D&D set, Fig. 6 An Image from Dungeons & Dragons: Men & Magic.83
“Men and Magic,” does include illustrations
(Fig. 6) of a “Beautiful Witch” and a
scantily-clad and topless “Amazon.”83 Such
depictions only served to Other females by
making them objects of desire, savage
warrior women, or vile hags. Tunnels &
Trolls, one of the first games to emulate
D&D’s style in 1975, followed suit by
offering a rearview sketch (Fig. 7) of a Fig. 7 An Amazon from Tunnels and Trolls.84
nude female holding a spear in one hand (1975).
and a severed male head in the other with the caption “Amazons! Very Tough Broads.”84 By
1978 AD&D indicted in its tables for character strength, different maximum scores based on race
83
Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Dungeons & Dragons: Men & Magic. Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical
Studies Rules, 1974, 27. See Appendix A Fig. 7.
84
Ken St. Andre. Tunnels and Trolls, (Phoenix, AZ: Flying Buffalo, reprint 2013), 19. See Appendix A
Fig. 8.
30
and gender, so a female halfling could not have a strength score higher than fourteen and a
female dwarf could not possess a value over seventeen, the scores for males of all races had a
higher maximum than their female counterparts.85 These gendered separations did not apply to
any of the other physical attributes, though all of the attributes show different maximums and
maximums for humans and each fictional race. Interestingly, every race assumed males as more
physically powerful, never seeming to consider the possibility of a race where females were
stronger than males. The science fiction TRPG Traveller departed from its fantasy counterparts
and dealt with race and gender by offering the disclaimer-like statement “nowhere in these rules
is a specific requirement established that any character (player or non-player) be of a specific
gender or race.”86 Despite this seemingly equitable language, players in-game coding of the
TRPG style brought out some misogynistic behaviors as one of Fine’s respondents suggested
that Traveller was not immune from acts against women that “would embarrass you, if you went
out and did them now.”87
During his time playing RPG Fine’s first-hand experience highlights another bit of
bricolage that kept the early TRPG style white and male dominated. Fine observed that women,
already hampered by having “few female or science fiction characters with whom” they could
relate, also faced male-dominated groups where “fantasy rape,” sexual aggressiveness, and
misogyny prevailed.88 Fine also noted that “in theory, female characters can be as powerful as
males, in practice they are often treated as chattels.”89 Furthermore, he provides several first-
hand examples of sexual assault or violently misogynistic behavior, concluding that such
85
Gary Gygax, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Player’s Handbook. (Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical
Studies Rules, 1978), 9.
86
Traveller: Volume 1, Characters and Combat. (Normal, Il: Games Design Workshop, 1977), 8.
87
Fine, Shared Fantasy, 69.
88
Fine, Shared Fantasy, 66-71.
89
31
behavior could explain “why few females participate in these games,” and that “while it was not
inevitable that the games will express male sexual fears and fantasies, they are structures so that
these expressions are legitimate.”90 Professor Barker’s Tékumel offered a few exceptions that
seem a bit more progressive than its counterparts. For example, the Yán Kór people on
Tékumel91 came from a matriarchal culture with “sturdy men– and even stronger women.”92
Furthermore, the character creation section of Empire of the Petal Throne noted that “in
Tsolyánu women are generally treated as the subservient sex,” but a female character could
“declare herself “Aridáni,” which denotes roughly “independent,” so that “she is then treated
exactly like a man under the law, and she may become a warrior, etc.”93 However, these
exceptions did not make Empire of the Petal Throne games immune from the rape and violence
against women that players had injected into the culture, as Fine describes in a first-hand account
of an encounter with a group of female warrior-priests of the goddess Avánthe:
Tom yells: “I’m screaming at them ‘Stop and be raped, you goddamn women!”
After all six are killed, Tom, still excited, suggests: “Let’s get some jewels and panties.”
Later in the game when we meet another group of Avanthe [sic] priestess-warriors, Tom
comments: “No fucking women in a blue dress [sic]94 are going to scare me… I’ll fight.
They’ll all be dead men.”
Roger: Is that your definition of a woman, a dead man?
Tom: a dead man.95
90
91
Note that Tékumel is the name of the world where the game takes place and part of the tile and is thus
not italicized when referring to the world.
92
M. A. R. Barker, Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, (Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical Studies Rules,
1975), 9.
93
M. A. R. Barker, Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, (Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical Studies Rules,
1975), 12.
94
Presumably Fine added [sic] here because Avanthe’s priestesses do not wear dresses.
95
32
Fine further clarifies that “while Tom’s reactions are extreme, he is never sanctioned by
others.”96 Naturally, nothing here suggests, nor do I imply that such extremes were the norm for
every gaming group. I do, however, suggest a trend in early TRPGs that “Othered” and
marginalized certain groups reflected in the demographics and style of TRPG players. These
examples illustrate how the early TRPG style incorporated a level of misogyny and an assertion
of control, as fantasy rape represented domination of the women of fictional settings. Thus,
despite efforts by some games to appeal to women, the misogyny of the nascent TRPG style
contributed to low female participation. Demographic data remains scant but suggests that
significant numbers of women still did not play TRPGs in the early eighties.97
The conversation over how the TRPG style that discouraged female players and made
female characters objects for rape and discrimination continued in issues of Dragon magazine.
The few female gamers playing D&D did not remain silent on these issues as they showed
resistance to the early TRPG style, even as they internalized its systems of control. A pair of
articles in the July 1982 Dragon, “Women Want Equality: and Why not?” by Jean Wells and
Kim Mohan and “Points to Ponder” by Kyle Gray, acted as responses to the challenges that faced
female gamers.98 Wells and Mohan suggested that the culture of gaming needed to change to
consider that “Women have a different outlook on, and perhaps a different approach to, “life” in
a fantasy campaign.”99 They also noted that while some women might like to use D&D to do
things they might not in real life, like “flirt” with strange men or “wear a low-cut dress,” they
loathed the way the games products presented women a promiscuous by default.100 Wells and
96
97
Peterson 472, Fine 40, 41. Wells and Mohan 16
98
Jean Wells and Kim Mohan, “Women want Equality: and Why not?” The Dragon 39, (July 1980) 16-17;
Kyle Gray, “Points to Ponder,” The Dragon 39, (July 1980) 17-18.
99
Wells and Mohan, “Women want Equality,” 16.
100
33
Mohan decried that the female miniatures used in the game “range from half-naked (possibly
more than half) slave girls in chains or placed across horses or dragons, to women fighters
dressed in no more chainmail to protect their modesty.”101 Both articles also addressed the issue
of female characters having a lower strength maximum that men, with Gray noting that “as a
female player of Dungeons & Dragons, there is one thing that never fails to annoy me: the
underestimation of the abilities of female fighters.”102 However, Wells and Mohan concluded
that “women are, as a group, less muscular than men,” while Gray claimed, “it may be logical to
penalize women in terms of sheer strength.”103 While conceding that “the strongest men will
always be more powerful than the strongest of women,” Wells and Mohan suggested adjusting
the maximum female strength to bring it closer to the male maximum.104 Alternatively, Gray
claimed that women were “more agile” and that “it is a medical fact that the average female can
withstand more mental stress than the average male”; therefore, female characters should receive
a bonus to their Dexterity and Wisdom scores.105 Even as these authors suggested how they
could make things more equitable, they also demonstrated the pervasiveness of the early TRPG
style. In their closing Wells and Mohan note, “women players and those men who are concerned
about women’s welfare will be left to devise their own methods of strengthening female
characters, if they think that such strengthening is necessary.”106 The reasons Wells and Mohan
presented for proposing, and not demanding, changes to female characters indicates how men
tried to steer the conversations over the female body in TRPGs and could not see the profound
systemic inequality of these games:
101
102
Gray, “Points to Ponder,” 17.
103
Wells and Mohan, “Women want Equality,” 17; Gray, “Points to Ponder,” 18.
104
Wells and Mohan, “Women want Equality,” 17; Gray, “Points to Ponder,” 18.
105
Gray, “Points to Ponder,” 18.
106
34
As with any other variant incorporated into a campaign, the only constantly important
consideration is game balance. The D&D and AD&D game systems were designed with
playability in mind, and the designers must sacrifice “realism” at times to achieve the
playability and overall balance the game needs to have, to be of maximum benefit to the
greatest number of players. Perhaps changes do need to be made in the game structure,
and perhaps they will be– but no change for the sake of one improvement is worth the
damage it might cause to other aspects of the game. D&D and AD&D are games and
they're supposed to be fun– not just for men or for women, but for everyone.107
By admitting that “designers must necessarily sacrifice ‘realism,’” Wells and Mohan never
considered the removal of the realistic, or “logical,” lower maximum for female strength to
enhance the “fun” of “everyone” playing female characters. Additionally, they never expand
upon their implication to detail how a female warrior possessing the same strength as a male
might upset the game’s “overall balance.”108 Their conclusion reads as an apologetic assuaging
the feelings of male gamers who might take offense at making their fictional worlds, and thus the
TRPG style more equitable for women.
Nearly 18 months later in a January 1982 Dragon article entitled “Dungeons aren’t
supposed to be ‘for men only’” contributing editor Roger E. Moore, acknowledged but vilified
the penchant for rape as an in-game activity or storytelling device.109 Referencing Wells, Mohan,
and Gray’s call for equality he describes how some players suggested that rape existed as a part
of the “real and fantasy worlds,” before he facetiously inquires if men included “inflation, high
unemployment, and racism” or other unpleasant topics in their games.110 Furthermore, he
contemplated “what male gamers would think if their favorite male characters became part of a
scenario reminiscent of the novel/movie Deliverance.”111 However, though Moore advised
107
108
109
Roger E. Moore, “Dungeons aren’t supposed to be ‘for men only,’” Dragon 50, (January 1982), 51.
110
Moore, “for men only,” 51.
111
35
excluding rape from the game and suggested fairness by advising DMs, “if you have a gang of
louts on some street corner insult all the women characters in one encounter, have another group
insult all the men in another,” he also offered some guidance that exercised control over the
female body.112 To prevent females from becoming pregnant, rendering them unable to go
adventuring, Moore recommended a few workarounds. DMs could forgo rolling the dice to see
if a female character became pregnant, instead allowing for “divine intervention… [as] Isis and
Athena don’t want their female followers having babies all the time, interrupting their careers,
etc.” or a DMs could employ a “Wish spell [to] prevent the possibility of unintentional future
pregnancies.”113 Finally, a DM could “have a Magic-User invent a magic pill that permanently
prevents conception unless the female characters want to get pregnant.”114 Despite the signals of
shifting attitudes among some male gamers, a great deal of effort still went into a style that made
the women in these worlds targets of control.
Depictions of race reveal another key element of the style instituted by TRPGs in their
early years. TRPGs arose in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, making race a difficult
subject to completely disregard, though the white middle-class dominance of the hobby may
have made such matters a distant concern. While some scholars argue that in RPGs “the word
‘Race’ often has little do with the complex mix of cultural upbringing, color, parentage or
geographical origins,”115 others suggest that in many TRPGs “light-skinned, Western European
appearances are associated with good, while dark-skinned appearances are often associated with
112
113
114
115
Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Jaako Stenros, Staffan Björk. "Thwe Impact of Role-Playing Games on
Culture." In Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach, edited by José P. Zagal and Sebastian
Deterding,172-188, (New York: Routledge, 2018), 174.
36
evil---effectively expressing notions of white supremacy.”116 In the same vein as the latter view,
scholar Thomas Hahn posits “that represented color difference is never ‘innocent,’ neutral, or
without cross-cultural evaluative meaning.”117 The primary settings for D&D such as
Blackmoor, and Greyhawk, tended to adopt a medieval European culture as a standard; though
some exoticized Orientalist elements of certain Asian cultures did make it into early versions of
D&D, such as Jinni, Samurai, and Asian martial arts, a faux-Europe proved more familiar. As
noted, emulating Europe did allow for the simplified explanation that Tolkien’s Rohirrim were
essentially Norman cavalry, or that Howard’s Stygians were basically Egyptians, granting
newcomers a quick sense of fictional settings based on their real-world knowledge. Though gross
overgeneralizations, such explanations partially illustrate why Eurocentric ideas proved central
to the creation of the fantasy worlds, and thus the style, of D&D and other TRPGs. The writers
of D&D did not lack awareness of other settings as an illustration in the AD&D Player’s
Handbook shows a “European” knight flanked by a few priests whose grab and trappings
indicate Meso-American, Chinese, and Japanese origins.118 However, this picture contains the
sole obviously non-Eurocentric depictions in the book. Other exceptions certainly existed in
early TRPGs, M.A.R. Barker’s Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne used the dark-skinned and
Asian inspired Tsolyáni as the default culture, a decision almost certainly influenced by his
position as a professor of South Asian languages.119 However, the hard dichotomy between light
and dark-skinned races flowed from long-standing complexities over the placement of color in
116
J. Patrick Williams, et al. "Sociology and Role-Playing Games." In Role-Playing Game Studies: A
Transmedia Approach, edited by José P. Zagal and Sebastian Deterding, 227-244, (New York: Routledge, 2018),
239.
117
Thomas G. Hahn, "The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before the Modern
World." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 1 (2001): 1-37. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article
/16479, 6.
118
Gary Gygax, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Players Handbook, (Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical
Studies Rules, 1978), 43. See Appendix A Fig. 5.
119
M. A. R. Barker, “Legion of the Petal Throne Panting Guide,” The Dragon no. 6, (Apr. 1977), 8.
37
evaluating a person’s worth.120 Perhaps, the most well-known example in D&D comes from the
evil elvish race known as drow, described as “black-skinned and pale-haired” the drow “were
cruel and selfish” elves driven underground by their light-skinned cousins of “better
disposition.”121 Therefore, blackness represented evil as an entry in the Monster Manual
explains, “drow are said to be as dark as [the surface-dwelling elves] are bright and as evil, as the
latter are good”122 thus making a clear connection between darkness and evil opposed by
brightness and good.
TRPG’s rise in the mid and early seventies as American involvement in Vietnam neared
its end also influenced the community’s Orientalized reencoding of race, which returned a
measure of control that young white males could not exercise regarding the war. Though the
multiple elements that made up TRPGs existed well before 1974, D&D appeared in this year
followed rapidly by several other TRPG, both thematic clones and games in a range of other
genres. The timing of the appearance of RPGs aligns with concepts of youths seeking new paths
to understanding their chaotic world. For TRPG fans, fictional worlds became an appealing
alternative to escape reality and deal with real-world issues in a framework where they
maintained control. In one notable early example, a community-oriented fan proposed in APA-L
that Vietcong fighters could appear as antagonists for D&D players alongside a black dragon.123
120
For more on colorism and its placement see: David Goldenberg, “Racism, color symbolism, and color
prejudice,” in Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, eds. The Origins of Racism in the West,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 88.
121
Don, Turnbull, Editor. Fiend Folio: Tome of Creatures Malevolent and Benign, (Lave Geneva, WI: TSR
Hobbies Inc., 1981), 33.
122
Gygax, Gary. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Monster Manual. Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical Studies
Rules, 1978, 39.
123
Peterson, Playing at the World, 512. The data comes from APA-L 522, While I have summaries of
several APA-L issues from Lee Gold date are hard to come by. Neither Gold’s notes nor Peterson’s bibliographic
info offer dates for most APA-L issues. To further complicate matter most of the remaining issues of APA’s form
this era exist only in difficult to access private collections leaving me to trust Peterson’s notes and verify their
context by cross referencing with Gold’s notes where possible.
38
Unpacking this submission illustrates one way APAs helped to establish the style of early
TRPGs as a place where the reencoders had control. The Vietcong in this example conform to
the reductive narrative of American ‘enemies,’ while the timing of the suggestion of adding
Vietcong to D&D as America’s involvement in Vietnam drew to a close, gave players a
tenacious enemy that they could face and presumably defeat in fictional combat. In addition to
control this usage of the Vietcong turns them into caricatures, monsters like the dragon they
accompanied, that fostered the white, male, Eurocentric aspect of early TRPG style without the
guilt or danger of engaging matters of race or the Vietcong in reality.
Though on the surface race seems a non-issue when examining early TRPGs from some
perspectives, deeper examination offers additional insights. Though Moore implied that games
did not include real-life unpleasantries like “inflation, high unemployment, and racism,” the
absence of overt racism did not veil systemic racism that contributed to the early TRPG style.124
In my review of the first one hundred and ten issues of Dragon, I found few depictions of people
Fig 8. Image from The Dragon #30.125
124
39
of color with a few exceptions.125 A photo issue in The Dragon #30 (Fig 8)126 shows a group of
young men playing a miniature wargame, with what may be a person of color making a move in
the game. However, the lighting in the picture makes clear identification difficult and no other
non-fictional people of color appear in the first ten years of the magazine. Understanding the
majority of the other depictions of people of color in these issues requires an explanation of the
habit among TRPG fans to translate
the character’s from other works of
fiction, such as films, novels,
folklore, and comic books into a
range of game systems. Therefore,
many people of color depicted in
Dragon came from the creations of
others, not made explicitly for
TRPGs. Characters such as H. Rider
Haggard’s Umslopoghaas, folklore
hero John Henry, boxing champion
Muhammad Ali, and comic book

Fig. 9 Space Master Advertisement, Dragon 97.128
hero and Iron Man’s bodyguard
James “Rhodey” Rhodes all received conversions into various games in issues of the
magazine.127 Additionally, Dragon issue 84 began a new section of the periodical named
125
Interested parties can find The Dragon # 1-100 archived at
https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/page/n16/mode/2up. Issues
126
T. J. Kask. editor, The Dragon 30, (October 1978), 2.
127
Kask, T. J., Editor. The Dragon 35, (March 1980), 21; Mohan, Kim. Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 64,
(August 1982),
16; Jaquet, Jake. The Dragon 38, (June 1980), R1-R5; Mohan, Kim. Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 95, (March 1985), 78.
40
“ARES” to focus on science fiction content, and
this segment often carried conversions of comic
book characters to the Marvel Heroes TRPG.128
Comic books by this time featured several
characters of color, however, TRPGs rarely
incorporated people of color who were not from
other media, and original or converted white
characters remained the norm. Often original
characters of color only appeared in

Fig. 10 Advertisement Dragon 68.129
advertisements for modern or futuristic games
like the post-apocalyptic TRPG Twilight
2000 or the science fiction TRPG Space
Master.129 Yet even in the latter case,
semiotic coding of color remained part of the
TRPG style as the dark-skinned character in
the advertisement (Fig. 9 above) appears
offering tribute to the light-skinned woman
before him. The Space Master advertisement
was not alone in demonstrating problematic
issues of race. Advertisements for TSR
128
Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 84, (April 1984), 68.
129
Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 93, (January 1985), 37; Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 97,
(May 1984), Rear Cover.
41
products and games (Fig. 10-11 right, 12 below) turned a corner in the early eighties and began
featuring women but not people of color, encoding a white-centric style.130
The few exceptions of depictions people of color
that existed in early articles and games, often suffered
from problematic foundational assumptions of the TRPG
style. The September 1981 issue of Dragon featured an
illustration (Fig. 13) from a D&D adventure that had
won first place in the magazine’s first contest for
adventure design, which asked fans to write an original
dungeon adventure.131 In the image, the black Fig. 13 From Dragon130
character stands by passively, clad in a leopard skin and holding a spear while his companion
clad in heavier European inspired armor prepares to smash a gem the holds the soul of the villain
130
Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 68, (December 1982), 35; Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon
73, (May 1983), 97; Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 74, (June 1983),78.
131
Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 53, (September 1981), 47.
42
in the adventure. The illustration makes the black character inert while also implying that he
lacked the skill or wisdom to use more the more protective armor of his lighter-skinned ally.
Another indicator of the way the early TRPGs handled race comes from Tunnels &
Trolls. The game’s spell list includes a spell named “Yassa-Massa” usable on “previously
subdued monsters/foes,” allowing the caster to “permanently enslave” their enemies.132 While no
detailed official studies on racial demographics in RPGs exist, the combination of the Minstrel
Show-like name of the spell with the word “enslave” speaks to lack of participation in early
RPGs by those who might have objected to such language. As Fine’s examples related to women
demonstrate, it was not that participants did not know their behavior went beyond the pale had
they been in the company of women, instead the early TRPG style tacitly condoned such
behavior. These depictions only reinforced the idea of style that these games were for whites
only, or that people of color were sidekicks or chattel. Arguments that advertisers and designers
only sought to cater to the fan base that played these games perpetuate the cyclic ideas that kept
marginalized people from inclusion in a range of cultural activities.
Some in the TRPG community did eventually begin to recognize the need to have people
of color contribute to the depictions of people from non-European cultures and by 1983 such
articles began to appear in Dragon. Kim Mohan, became editor-in-chief sometime after writing
his article on equality three years before stated: “the roots of fantasy role-playing are planted in
the soil of northern European culture, but that doesn’t mean that your campaign can’t branch out
to explore of the climates and other social systems.”133 He further suggested that “DM’s and
players alike should find it interesting, to say the least, to deal with a situation and a society that
aren’t typical of the circumstances in which most FRP [Fantasy Role-Playing] adventures take
132
Ken St. Andre, Tunnels & Trolls, 23.
133
Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief. Dragon 70, (February 1983), 3.
43
place.” The early TRPG style had made such adventures unusual up until this point. The
adventure, “Mechia” written by Gali Sanchez and touted as an “adventure to introduce the player
characters to a new culture” presents an encounter with an Aztec-like civilization right down a
city named Tenocatlan, that sat on the marshes of a lake much like the real Aztec capital of
Tenochtitlán.134 The piece also used the Aztec deities Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca and even
lifted the name of the last Aztec Emperor as the moniker of the adventure’s fictional emperor and
villain, Cuauhtémoc. However, TRPG style still showed its influence as the adventure
establishes a “White Savior” narrative that calls on the European-like player characters (fig. 14)
to prevent Cuauhtémoc and his Jaguar priests from turning more of his subjects into werejaguars
and causing a shift the deific balance of power from Quetzalcoatl to Tezcatlipoca.135 As before,
Dragon encoded the style and presented “Europeans” normal and other cultures different and
134
Gali Sanchez, “Mechica” Dragon 70, (February 1983), 36, 44-45.
135
Gali Sanchez, “Mechica” Dragon 70, (February 1983), 38.
44
exotic. Even as the community made efforts to alter the early TRPG style, deep-seated
institutions of Eurocentric dominion refused to give way.
Cultural change often comes slowly, and Dragon continued to work on its offerings of
other cultures. The story “Mzee” in the June 1984 issue, by African American fantasy and
Science Fiction author Charles R. Saunders, presented a tale from an outspoken critic of racism
in fantasy.136 The story gave Dragon a piece from the perspective of a person of color, with black
characters, an Afrocentric setting, and, most importantly, no characters from European
equivalents.137 Saunder’s story signaled change, but, the TRPG style encoded biases that
remained well past the eighties. In “Representation and Discrimination in Role-Playing Game, “
Fig. 14 “Mechica” Dragon 70.134
136
See Saunder’s essays Die Black Dog! A Look at Racism in Fantasy – Toadstool Wine (1975) and Of
Chocolate-Covered Conans and Pompous Pygmies – New Fantasy Journal #1 (1976).
137
Charles R. Saunders, “Mzee.” Mohan, Kim. Editor-in-Chief. Dragon (86) 58-63, June 1984.
45
Aaron Trammell argues that “discrimination of women and people of color is still common place
in today’s TRPG community, if in forms that are sometimes hard for the unaffected to notice.”138
Significantly, African American female game designer Julia Bond Ellingboe shifted from
making games focused on race to games focused on gender because while she can find other
female game designers in the 21st century, she knows of “scant few black designers”139 Her
TRPG Steal Away Jordon, places players in the role of slaves in the American Antebellum
South. Ellingboe wanted the game to use the game to show “that slaves had a lot more agency
than is commonly recognized.”140 However, the game received negative reviews because of its
“low production values” a fact she acknowledged due to her working alone one a minimal
budget, and a range of respondents who claimed the game might make them “feel guilty,” that “it
was not their thing” that they feared “they would get it wrong.”141 For Ellingboe, her hope that
the game could show that oppressed people had agency disintegrated under the weight of long-
held assumptions and fears about slavery. She explained that she had “never heard someone say,
‘I can’t play this paladin, because I don’t really have an experience as a paladin, and I’m afraid
of getting it wrong.’ But there are actual black people out there, so it raises the question what do
138
Aaron Trammell, "Representation and Discrimination in Role-Playing Games." In Role-Playing Game
Studies: A Transmedia Approach, edited by José P. Zagal and Sebastian Deterding, 440-447. (New York:
Routledge, 2018), 442. Trammell also recounts the experience of a person of color at Gen Con in 2013. Started in
1968 by Gary Gygax Gen Con has grown into the largest TRPG convention in the world. Trammell quotes Ajit
George who sated “It was a surreal experience and it felt like I had stepped into an ugly part of a bygone era, one in
which whites were waited upon by minority servants.” I recount this here as the issue reminds me of my experience
at multiple conventions including Genghis Con 2020 in Denver, CO, an event with thousands of attendees where
over the course of the three day weekend I counted less than five other people of color who were not a part of the
hosting hotel’s staff. Trammell notes on the same page that Gen Con only reached gender parity in speakers in 2016
“after 40 years of predominantly white male invited speakers” and increase from the 6% female speakers in 2011.
139
Ellingboe qtd. in Kathrine Castiello Jones, “‘A Lonely Place’: An Interview with Julia Bond Ellingboe.”
Analog Game Studies 3 no. 1, Jan. 2016, http://analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/a-lonely-place-an-interview-with-
julia-bond-ellingboe/.
140
141
46
you think black people are? Aren’t they human beings?142 Ellingboe also observed that “women
and African Americans [could] only write their own experiences? I find that this same standard
isn’t applied to white men.”143 Ultimately, misunderstandings over her game’s goals and her
lived experience caused Ellingboe to move away from games focused on race because “I am the
only African American woman executive that my company has ever had. I deal with ‘only-ness’
every single day. I don’t want to play it!”144 These feelings demonstrate that the style that
developed in the early years of TRPG’s rested on the foundation of systemic oppression in
mainstream American culture despite players’ attempts to escape reality, such insidious roots do
not shift or vanish easily. Understanding the prevalence of real-world issues like the war in
Vietnam, and gender and racial equality helps establish the seemly disparate pieces of bricolage
that set the tone of the worlds that projected the early TRPG style.
Gaining Experience: Concluding thoughts.
The control fictional worlds gave players unifies the bricolage of the early TRPG style.
Unsavory acts such as fantasy rape, enslaving foes via magical means, or fighting a dragon with
Vietcong allies gave young white men fictional spaces where they held extensive, and in some
cases near limitless control. The actions of TRPG players at the dawn of the hobby do not imply
overt racism or misogyny in every case, but they do suggest a systemic and pervasive element of
style that become ingrained in the TRPG community and the games they made. As game
designer Tony Bath opined, “the advantage of a mythical background was that ‘there are no
restrictions save those that we ourselves impose. You can indulge in any mixture of types and
142
143
Ellingboe qtd. in Kathrine Castiello Jones, “‘A Lonely Place’: An Interview with Julia Bond
Ellingboe.” Analog Game Studies 3 no. 1, Jan. 2016, http://analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/a-lonely-place-an-
interview-with-julia-bond-ellingboe/.
144
47
races, mix medieval and ancient, do as you please within the structure of your design’”145
Contrary to the suggestion of “mixing types and races” the early TRPG style kept white men as
the focus of “the structure” of these games. The games “impose[d]” real-world “restrictions” on
the imaginary races and marginalized groups in these games that otherwise lacked any external
limitations. TRPGs entered the marketplace at a vital juxtaposition of events, as the social,
cultural, and political changes of the Long Sixties still reverberated throughout the world. The
conflict in Southeast Asia, the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, and
numerous other events of the Long Sixties challenged the longstanding status of middle-class
white men in America. These men sought an escape from a world that disrupted their dominant
position and threatened privileges they often lacked the tools, or need, to evaluate. The sixties
and seventies saw a rise in the popularity of a range of escapist entertainments, particularly the
fantasy and science fiction genres. This search for other worlds made “the early
1970s…undoubtedly the time when the fantasy genre enjoyed its greatest prominence to date,
and reached the largest number of consumers”146 Many of these young men turned to the newly
minted TRPG industry that gave them unprecedented latitude. The opinions of founder Gary
Gygax about how to play TRPGs, notwithstanding, the community reencoded his work into a
staggering array of additions, modifications, and entirely new games. In doing so, TRPG fans
created a distinctive sub-cultural style especially in the ways that significant social or political
events influenced the semiotic codes that TRPGs projected. Many aspects of bricolage that
formed this style persist in the TRPG community in the 21st century. Though these male-centric
and Eurocentric aspects led to some traits of the TRPGs style that modern readers might find
145
Tony Bath, Slingshot (9) 1967, qtd in in Peterson, Playing at the World, 43
146
48
cringeworthy, TRPGs also offered pathways to explore the imagination and have fun in an
environment that lacked real-world consequences.
As a young African American, none of the complexities of the TRPG style occurred to
me when I began playing in the seventies or as I became deeply engrossed in the eighties. In
retrospect, TRPGs allowed me to exercise power that I lacked as a black youth in America,
especially when I acted as the GM. I can also look back and realize how I internalized the
elements of the TRPG style highlighted here. I rarely played non-white characters unless they
were and exoticized Others, aliens that often lifted traits from marginalized peoples, or
hackneyed caricatures of different cultures, from sagely Confucius quoting Chinese detectives,
laconic Native American trackers, Japanese martial arts masters, and many more.147 However,
shortcomings that did not impact the young white men who dominated the hobby aside, TRPGs
also encode a range of other traits covered by the scholars in my historiography. They help in the
creation of narratives, they foster collaboration, and they encourage the development of writing,
math, and critical thinking skills, to name a few.148
The subcultural style established by early TRPGs, while resistant to change, continues to
evolve beyond the less admirable traits of the early TRPG style. The 3rd edition of D&D that
launched in 2000, included prominent images of heroic characters of color.149 Additionally, the
second edition of the D&D variant Pathfinder that premiered in 2019 chose to use the term
ancestry rather than race, in a tacit acknowledgment of the baggage the word race carries. 150
This new crop of games explores ideas that escaped the first TRPG fans– that in games that
147
I still possess the character sheets for many of these characters.
148
Again, see Ewalt, Cover, Tresca, Peterson, Bowman and Role-Playing Game Studies: A Transmedia
Approach for more on the benefits of TRPGs.
149
Monte Cook, Johnathan Tweet, and Skip Williams. Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook 3rd
edition. (Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2000), 39, 89.
150
Logan Bonner et. al., Pathfinder 2nd edition, (Redmond, WA: Paizo Publishing, 2019), 2.
49
permit fire-breathing dragons, magic, and amazing feats of daring-do, the elimination or
modification of past cultural norms should seem no more out of place than a ravening horde of
orcs, or a talking, chess-playing cat. Games in recent years push new boundaries around core
elements of TRPGs, by allowing them to grapple with difficult topics in a place with lower
stakes than reality. TRPGs like Harlem Unbound, by African American game designer Chris
Spivey, reframe the popular ideas of racist author H. P. Lovecraft, an industry staple since the
Call of Cthulhu TRPG appeared in 1981. Harlem Unbound places players in the role of black
investigators in 1920’s Harlem, facing off against Lovecraft’s menagerie of otherworldly
monstrosities.151 The game invites players to engage with “New York’s jazz-soaked streets”
while “ flip[ing]the standard Lovecraftian view of minorities on its head, putting them in the role
of heroes who must struggle against cosmic horrors while also fighting for a chance at
equality.”152 As in wider society, new voices work to reencode the TRPG style. However, while
publishers may help shape trends within the community, fans must also reencode these shifts for
the style to positively progress. On r/Pathfinder, the Reddit forum for the Pathfinder TRPG fan
Derrysumi posted a map in September of 2019 that respond to an older anonymous map of
Golarion that links the fictional places on the map to their real-world equivalents. Derrysumi
made the new map to “Take into account new lore, the passing of ten years, and also to be a little
less racist!”153 The old map quickly draws the eye by referring to the Mwangi Expanse, the
world’s Africa analog, as “Bung Bunga Land” (Fig. 15 below) while also framing the large and
151
Spivey, Chris, Harlem Unbound, Kickstater project March 24, 2020,
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881168175/harlem-unbound-a-cthulhu-roleplaying-game-sourcebo, for those
questioning H.P. Lovecraft’s designation as a racist see his public domain poem “On the Creation of Niggers.”
152
Spivey, Chris, Harlem Unbound, Kickstater project March 24, 2020,
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881168175/harlem-unbound-a-cthulhu-roleplaying-game-sourcebo
153
Derryzumi. “Inner Sea Map Explained, Updated for 2 nd Edition!,” Reddit.com, r/Pathfinder, accessed
April 15, 2020,
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder/comments/cmtc3h/inner_sea_map_explained_updated_for_2nd_edition/.
50
diverse region as a single entity, an issue that continues to plague Africa when viewed by the
West. Derrysumi’s new map (Fig. 16 below) makes strides by dividing the region into three
entities “Scary Jungle, I Bless the Rains Down in Africa, and Fuck Colonists.”154 Though still
problematic, the new map shows a marked improvement over the old. At the very least, the new
map also acknowledges past issues while illustrating that TRPG fans can work to positively
reframe the fictional places they play in, and thus the TRPG style.
The early TRPG style and the TRPG subculture, based themselves on the cultural norms
and ideas of the middle-class, white, American male. As a matter of course, the systemic
institutions that they lived in contributed to the style of the fictional worlds they designed.
154
Derryzumi. “Inner Sea Map Explained, Updated for 2 nd Edition!,” Reddit.com, r/Pathfinder, accessed
April 15, 2020,
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder/comments/cmtc3h/inner_sea_map_explained_updated_for_2nd_edition/.
51
Fig. 15 “Original” anonymous map.154 Fig. 16 Derrysumi’s “Corrected” map.154
TRPGs still have issues, but the cooperation the community thrives upon helps it work through
its issues, when fans open themselves to understanding the darker elements of their hobby and
discuss how to move past them. When faced with issues concerning “non-white people” or ideas
of cultural appropriation, some fans still become defensive and vitriolic in opposing the notion
that the TRPG community suffers from or needs to address these issues.155 However, other fans
like Derrysumi demonstrate that they can actively engage and exchange information with their
Evan Torner, “RPG Theorizing by Designers and Players,” In Role-Playing Game Studies: A
155
Transmedia Approach, edited by José P. Zagal and Sebastian Deterding, 191-212, (New York: Routledge, 2018),
206.
52
community that challenges persistent instances of systemic inequity rooted in the formation of
the TRPG style.
The early style grew around a community looking to escape the pressures of a drastically
changing world, but that community also nested within larger structures of marginalization that
necessitate introspection and awareness that gamers did not, or chose not, to see. This style
reflected real-world structures and held such sway that even the few players who represented
marginalized groups placed fun and “realism” over equitable rules. The collaborative nature of
the TRPG style caused it to echo the biases of its creators and the properties that inspired them.
Despite the attempts of the makers of these fictional worlds to not include unsavory elements
like “inflation, high unemployment, and racism,”156 the privilege of the fanbase’s majority
leaked into their mythical spaces. These limitations prevented them from contextualizing the full
scope of the unpleasant elements that had entered their games. However, the Folie à deux, the
shared experiences, and ideas of the TRPG style also eventually opened the community to the
idea that they could go further in removing distasteful elements and that their creations could
transcend Europe and Eurocentric ideas in more ways than gamers still reeling from the social
upheavals of the Long Sixties had dared to consider.
156
53
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WHEN WORLDS COLLABORATE: THE STYLE OF EARLY TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING

Hist 7690: The Global Sixties

Rolling the Dice: Introducing Tabletop Role-playing Games.

widespread cultural influence of tabletop role-playing.

collaborative nature of TRPGs solidified an emergent “imagined community” of players who

Using fanzines, personal reflections of my own experience as an African-American gamer since

Leveling Up: a new TRPG Methodology

race and gender relevant in sometimes subtle but significant ways.

frameworks illustrate the complexities of defining the TRPG style.

codes based, in part, on an application of Gramsci’s work on ‘hegemonic’ and ‘corporate’

shape of the nascent TRPG community.

in Tabletop Role-Playing Games explores the cooperative construction of narratives in RPGs.

perspectives, including “The Many Face of Role-Playing Games,” “Definitions of “Role-Playing

Games,” “The Impact of Role-Playing Games on Culture,” “Sociology and Role-Playing

Fandom,” “Players and Their Characters in Role-Playing Games,” “Representation and

Discrimination in Role-Playing Games,” and “Power and Control In Role-Playing Games.”32

between discussing the supersession of TRPGs by CRPGs (Tresca) to serving as nostalgic

In this article, I take a slightly non-traditional approach to primary sources and

Increased popularity in recent years notwithstanding, TRPG’s niche status requires an

worldbuilder working to lead, or “run,” a group of players through adventures in a fictional

managing the rest of the world, to simulate a “realistic” fictional world.40

study, participants or fans conducted every academic examination I found in my research of

connection to the hobby.

TRPG community keenly aware of external scrutiny encouraging to enthusiasts to reassess

Despite creating fictional worlds,

gamers52 used the tools and

knowledge they had at hand. Most

early TRPGs presented male-

dominated and Eurocentric settings,

hardly shocking given that the

players and creators of wargames,

and thus early RPG’s, were almost

exclusively “white, male, middle-

class American youths.”53 Early

enthusiasts took a great deal of

inspiration from the works of

authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and

Fig. 2 Howard’s Hyborian Age.54

south and east in an occidental-oriental relationship.54

Fig. 3 The world of Abeir-Toril (The Forgotten Realms).56

pervasiveness of European equivalents as default settings.56 Seemingly innocent

Pathfinder’s Tian Xia,

and Kara-Tur in The

China and Japan with

some traits from other

parts of Southeast Asia.

However, these devices

that established and

entrenched a style that

favored the white male

players of these games

with worlds where light

of some of the precursors to the sharing of fictional worlds.

The drive to create and share the

fruits of their labors existed among science

fiction, and fantasy fans well before TRPGs

appeared. TRPG fans did not invent the

sharing of fan content, though a brief

explanation of precursors reifies how fans

shared their ideas and how some major