The tables I ran/participated in pre-covid, both those at the library group I spear headed and the AL games I attended at an FLGS were all white. In the case of the library group, the small town was very white, so % wise it was reflective of the community; the FLGS town was more ethnically diverse, so It wouldn't surprise me at all if there wasn't some systemic/"subtle"/unconscious racism going on there keeping the tables white. Mostly male, but some female; To my knowledge none were non-binary or trans, but it's entirely possible I wouldn't necessarily know. No idea of orientation of those at the FLGS; library group had at least two gay members, at least a couple that identify as "mostly straight" and one ace.
The online group I run, of people I know in-person, includes ace and straight individuals; in at least one case, I don't know the player's orientation; I've assumed straight, but I only now realized that's probably cultural hetero-normativity at work. To my knowledge everyone is cis, but again that's an assumption I'm making.
I'm also in a play-by-post here, and for the most part I don't know race/orientation/gender identity for my fellow players in that group.
I'm on the Autism Spectrum and have ADHD, and one of my players has ADHD, but otherwise, we're not the most diverse group around. None of us are LGBTQ+ (as far as I know), all of us are white, but we semi-regularly have 1-2 females in our group. This is mostly due to the fact that my 2 most common players are my cousins, and we live in a small farm town that's mostly white (my town does have a decent sized Hispanic population, but our town is very segregated, so none of us really had any Hispanic friends in school or other activities).
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I've joked a few times that I'm the token straight person in a few of my regular gaming groups. Gender expression and sexuality are pretty diverse, but not so much racially. I mostly play with friends and people I've known for a long time, and didn't grow up around much integrated racial diversity so that probably explains that. I'd be happy to play in even more diverse groups but I'm old enough that the groups I play with don't often get in genuinely new players so there's not much of an 'intake stream' there.
I will say that the more diverse the group the more I tend to enjoy it these days. I would not be in a rush to get into a game full of only other straight white dudes at this point, it would feel weird and echo-chamber-ey to me now.
The people I have played DnD with have been mostly LGBTQIA+. I come from a small hick town so all of my players have been white. As for gender, my current group is made up of myself a trans woman, an enby, an egg (someone who is unsure of their gender), and 5 guys. The group I currently play with has the most cisgender heterosexual people I've ever had in one group: 4, which is just over half of the group.
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call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
I was wondering how diverse your tables are in regards to your players? I know that is a big thing in D&D right now and I wonder how many people find themselves playing with people of different racial backgrounds or gender.
I find the sort of census taking going on in the response to this post a bit curious. It's literally privileged information (in that folks should always feel privileged when someone shares something personal with them) and some may feel free to disseminate, some as has been stated may not be comfortable sharing such information on understandable protective grounds or simple ettiquette, and then there are folks who may just not really know some or all the people they play with that well outside of gametime. I fall in the latter two categories of those speculated possibilities. So rather than performance in accords to the threads rapidly adopted self-audit format, a few thoughts:
1.) I imagine folks who play at diverse tables are folks who live and socialize in diverse communities. In other words the bulk of diverse tables I'm imagining are reflective of the diversity of where they're located or the community they've found within that location (or virtual space for those who play through online LFG type venues) rather than intentional or designed with diversity as an actual goal for the table. In other words, diverse gaming tables are more likely epiphenomenal or a chicken and egg thing to the communities within which the gamers find themself rather than a particular catalyst for the creation of diversity.
2.) Which goes back to begging the questions or framework from this thread's initial ask. I don't believe the creation or fostering of diverse tables fully hits the mark as to what the OP speculates is "a big thing in D&D right now." I don't believe it is the case that the publishers and designers of Dungeons and Dragons have "diversity" at the level of the specific gaming tables as an end goal. Rather, the "big thing in D&D right now" from the designers' perspective seems to be inclusivity and accessibility. Monotype make ups of your game group does not mean your game group is failing at Dungeons and Dragons. Rather the goal of inclusivity and accessibility is that the product of Dungeons and Dragons is thoughtfully designed so that it can be played by anyone. I do believe the present design team and its supporters are sincere in their expressed desire for all folks however they identify to feel welcome to play Dungeons and Dragons; but it's also simple best business practice to be inclusive because market forces are increasingly diverse (that chicken and egg thing again, served differently).
3.) I still find it curious that so much marketing fanfare (and reiteration of said fanfare in the gaming press) of Tasha's and now Van Richten's have dedicated chapter space in their books on Session 0 social contracts and then more specifically personal boundaries / comfort levels relating to trauma, and these writings are lauded as innovations to gaming, when frankly, those struck me as simply codifications of informally held and maintained best practices within what I'd call "good game groups" that had been in place before I started playing 30 years ago. It's like there was an inclusive game culture and then one of the preeminent TTRPG publishes the practices of that culture as rulesets ... to be consumed by the culture that was engaged in those practices already. I guess it's another sort of chicken and egg thing of the accountability (publishers) and validation (community) variety. I guess a key factor is that there's a broader social discourse over diversity, equity, and inclusion so the concepts have been made a lot more accessible.
In the end, whether you play at a diverse table, intentionally or not, or a table of a more mono makeup, as long as everyone plays in a welcoming spirit, everyone is participating in the player community's diverse spectrum. There's room for everyone, it's just being made more explicit as of late.
I apologize if anyone found this pedantic but I think some of the distinctions I'm making are key to understanding "the big deal in D&D right now" versus the muddled impression conveyed in the OP.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
3.) I still find it curious that so much marketing fanfare (and reiteration of said fanfare in the gaming press) of Tasha's and now Van Richten's have dedicated chapter space in their books on Session 0 social contracts and then more specifically personal boundaries / comfort levels relating to trauma, and these writings are lauded as innovations to gaming, when frankly, those struck me as simply codifications of informally held and maintained best practices within what I'd call "good game groups" that had been in place before I started playing 30 years ago. It's like there was an inclusive game culture and then one of the preeminent TTRPG publishes the practices of that culture as rulesets ... to be consumed by the culture that was engaged in those practices already. I guess it's another sort of chicken and egg thing of the accountability (publishers) and validation (community) variety. I guess a key factor is that there's a broader social discourse over diversity, equity, and inclusion so the concepts have been made a lot more accessible.
There is benefit to codifying best practices though, because I know for certain that not all groups gamed that way, so transmitting those best practices will help propagate them through the gaming community. As well, these kinds of initiatives serve as a signal that DNDBeyond is an inclusive and welcoming company. Certainly they are considering their bottom line, but it also just seems to be the ethical thing to do.
In the end, whether you play at a diverse table, intentionally or not, or a table of a more mono makeup, as long as everyone plays in a welcoming spirit, everyone is participating in the player community's diverse spectrum. There's room for everyone, it's just being made more explicit as of late.
I, for one, think there's value in that being made more explicit.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Myself I am your boring white male and my preferred pronouns are He, Him, Dude and I only have 1 requirement for gaming at my table be polite and respect everyone else at the table. I do not care the color of skin, Religion followed, sexual preferences, or even the fact of being transgendered or whatever else folks see themselves as. Just treat others as you wished to be treated.
I'm a white, cisgender hetero DM on the autism spectrum (the last part can make some aspects of the hobby difficult for me, but I enjoy doing it overall). As for my players, one of them is also on the spectrum. I did have a gay player in one campaign I ran last year but I haven't heard from him in a while. Beyond that, I'm unaware of the ethnicities of most of my players unless they mention it explicitly since I don't play with video, and I don't generally inquire about their sexual preferences (or lack thereof) either (to be clear, it's not that I have an "over there" mindset to these things, it's just never really occurred to me to ask and I'd have no problem with my players offering such information freely). I do make sure to ask about which pronouns my players want to be referred with before I play with them, and so far as I can tell my current group is pretty much cisgender.
Of course, I'm obviously open to anyone joining my games as long as they're cool people and have a respectful, open-minded attitude.
This is something I think about a lot. I started playing and subsequently DMing about three years ago and I started with all of my high school friends (since we were all big nerds and grew up playing MMOs with one another). So my tables started off as, and surprisingly going forward have always been majority black and poc.
It wasn’t until like maybe a year ago when I started hopping in to watch the various games on the twitch dnd directory did I remember that yeah dnd is still something that’s dominated by a certain demographic
Which demographic?
My primary friend group has 4 black men including myself, 2 indian men, 1 guyanese man, 1 white woman and 1 asian woman. I run a game for my sister which is 2 black women, 2 white men, 1 white women and myself as a black man A friend of mine from playing fighting games runs a discord game for us which is 6 black men, and 2 white men And I recently started running for a new group which has 5 black men, 1 hispanic man, 1 native pacific islander woman, 1 mixed asian woman and the last guy I'm not actually sure what race he is lmao but I assume he's black
And across the groups all of us are cis as far as I'm knowledgeable with some leaning gender queer. Our sexualities range although the majority are straight but not all, there are some homosexual and bi people in our groups
3.) I still find it curious that so much marketing fanfare (and reiteration of said fanfare in the gaming press) of Tasha's and now Van Richten's have dedicated chapter space in their books on Session 0 social contracts and then more specifically personal boundaries / comfort levels relating to trauma, and these writings are lauded as innovations to gaming, when frankly, those struck me as simply codifications of informally held and maintained best practices within what I'd call "good game groups" that had been in place before I started playing 30 years ago. It's like there was an inclusive game culture and then one of the preeminent TTRPG publishes the practices of that culture as rulesets ... to be consumed by the culture that was engaged in those practices already. I guess it's another sort of chicken and egg thing of the accountability (publishers) and validation (community) variety. I guess a key factor is that there's a broader social discourse over diversity, equity, and inclusion so the concepts have been made a lot more accessible.
There is benefit to codifying best practices though, because I know for certain that not all groups gamed that way, so transmitting those best practices will help propagate them through the gaming community. As well, these kinds of initiatives serve as a signal that DNDBeyond is an inclusive and welcoming company. Certainly they are considering their bottom line, but it also just seems to be the ethical thing to do.
(I'm going to assume DNDBeyond was typo and we both know we're talking about Wizards when we're talking about the designers of Tasha's and VRGtoR. I was happy to see the Pride article yesterday on this site, but I'll get back to DNDBeyond in a moment).
Well, I don't know about how ethical it is. Frankly, when I'm cynical about this I think it's not accountability at all by the designers, but blame shifting. WotC has received flack for its problems in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion (as you often strike me as a generally aware poster, I won't belabor that but will if you want that claim fleshed out) and issues some press owning some of their mistakes, making some editorial fixes to a few problematic representations, but the most substantive in terms of word and page counts in books are instructions to the player community as to how the game should be played (to the tune of a word count which Monte Cooke Games handled much more succinctly while also saying so much more)? They know what's frankly "playing style guidance" for DMs in an optional expansion book is "take it or leave it" (one presumes one would want to present a welcoming playing style, but we know from some participants on this very board that that is actually not the case). Meanwhile the jury is still out whether WotC is truly a "welcoming inclusive company" in the way it actually operates (notably as an employer or more explicitly determiner of "who gets to design Dungeons and Dragons officially"), a way outside of coopting established practices and bandwagoning them in a way that makes them look like they're in a position of leadership on the issue. That might not be ethical so much as obscurantist. It's not a hard position I hold to, but it's a thought that passes my mind a lot.
In the end, whether you play at a diverse table, intentionally or not, or a table of a more mono makeup, as long as everyone plays in a welcoming spirit, everyone is participating in the player community's diverse spectrum. There's room for everyone, it's just being made more explicit as of late.
I, for one, think there's value in that being made more explicit.
There's actual leadership in making something more explicit, then there's capitalizing through coopting a norm. I'd like to think Wizards is trying beyond good business, but I'm not entirely convinced (nor am I entirely dismissive of some of their gestures). Your and my standards, or how we evaluate progress, may just be different.
So to circle back to the value and choices of how one makes ones values explicit re: DND Beyond. A year ago today I think was when DDB announced it would donate half of its featured dice sales for a week to Black Lives Matter (they might have extended it longer, I'm just going off the press at the time circulated with the announcement, which is all a basic Google on the matter digs up, usually indicative of their being little if any follow up press). I don't know how much was actually donated (see prior parenthetical) but I sometimes wonder if the money might have been better spent on DDB developing its own internal moderation policies (rant truncated because that's starting to migrate from topic).
To return to topic, I guess my beef with this thread's framing and the bulk of the responses is that it prompts most folks to respond with what I've described as "census" response or "boxes checked." There's the rub, people, like corporations, when it comes to diversity and inclusion are all too ready to provide some sort of self-certification that they've "done the work." Those gestures forget that inclusiveness requires intentionality. No one gets a boxed check because of their table's census figures. On the contrary, being welcoming is a constant work in progress, it's doing the work. I feel it would have been better to not ask "describe your table's make up along established diversity spectrums" but instead simply ask "what do you do as DMs and players to assure that your game is welcoming?" That's a harder but a nevertheless better ask than reflecting on the demographics of one's geography and how they inform who shows up at your table.
This is an interesting thread. If one were to read this and generalize D&D groups based on these responses, it would seem that not many cisgendered, straight people play D&D. Compare that to the actual percentages of each group in the whole population of the world.
So either this topic attracts attention from people that don't identify as cisgendered straight etc, or D&D as a whole has become very inclusive, which is a good thing. I would certainly like to play with more people from different nationalities etc. Finding a 2nd group isn't easy though, as I want a group that's mature and gender-diverse.
I'm a generic AF cishet white dude DM who has two tables, one is 3 cishet white men and 1 cisbi white woman. My other table is 2 cishet white men and 2 cishet white women. Not the most diverse group, but that being said, I'm not going to go out looking for marginalised folx to fill a quote to make myself feel good, that's not the point. I will however do everything I can to make my table a safe, welcoming and inviting space.
I think as far as this thread goes, there's likely a multitude of factors. I honestly hope D&D is becoming more inclusive and that this thread is representative of that, and my experience does seem to reflect that. I also think there's a correlation between the kind of people that feel there's a value sharing in a thread like this and those people having diverse tables. It's a self-selection bias a bit.
I think as far as this thread goes, there's likely a multitude of factors. I honestly hope D&D is becoming more inclusive and that this thread is representative of that, and my experience does seem to reflect that. I also think there's a correlation between the kind of people that feel there's a value sharing in a thread like this and those people having diverse tables. It's a self-selection bias a bit.
I think this is definitely true. There is always going to be a bias for that.
Also, though, I think this is a reflection on wider society. A couple of years ago, I would have had no idea what "cishet" meant. I would have understood many different sexualities etc, but there would still have been many labels I didn't understand. I also wouldn't have understood why people would want to label themselves, and few but close friends would have talked to me of their sexuality/gender/etc. It didn't affect me when I did find out about someone, but I didn't know about most.
For me, I have seen a radical shift in the past couple of years. I now know more about the sexuality and gender of acquaintances than I have ever done before, whether online or in person, social or professional. It has become much more acceptable to discuss these topics with virtual strangers, which is great. I have a better understanding of why people want the labels, a better understanding of the people I am communicating with in general.
Now, I may be late to the party. I am a cishet white male, working in a male dominated industry, and I'm an introvert who doesn't socialise much outside his small group of friends. However, I can only see these recent (to me) moves as overwhelmingly positive.
Back to the opening topic: My current game is at a table with 1 cisbi male, 1 cisbi female, and 2 other females who have not yet shared these details with the group. All of us are White British. There are 2 with confirmed ADHD, one of those also with Aspergers, and none of us are neurotypical.
I approach "diversity at the table" the same way I do people in general. I honestly don't care what race/ethnicity/gender/etc somebody is. I form my opinions of people based on how they act. For D&D that means they want to play D&D with me and aren't jerks with bonus points to creativity and a good sense of humor.
That being said at my current game I'm a straight white guy playing a female aasimar teenager, the DM is Mexican by both ethnicity and nationality, and the other two are guys from somewhere in the US (I don't know their races/ethnicities and I honestly don't care). I had been playing in a game until recently (DM's got a new job and became unavailable) that was four American men (one of whom is gay and lives in Japan), one Australian guy, and the sixth player and DM are both Australian women. I'm planning to take over as DM for the second group as soon as I come up with a decent start to a campaign. Obviously these are both online games. With my overnight schedule I'm only normally available to play consistently late morning and very early afternoon by my time, so my main selection criterion for gaming associates is "will/can they play at this time?" Hence being in a game with 4 of 7 members being on the other side of the planet.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I’m a brown cis heterosexual male and I DM two groups. One is entirely composed of 3-4 players all like me and the other is two brown men, two brown women, and one white man. I’m not aware of everyone’s sexual orientation in that second group but everyone is cis.
These are all people I know in real life, though. If I were starting a game online with complete strangers I would take diversity into account when building up a group, not in a box ticking/tokenism way but I would make a strong effort to avoid a homogeneous group vis a vis gender identity, race, sexual orientation, class, or neurodiversity.
Not only do I believe it to be the right thing to do, I also genuinely believe it makes the game better and (provided everyone is open) enriches the experience by exposing people to different views and life experiences.
As an aside one of the female players in my mixed groups is playing a male character and one of the male players is playing a female character and both RP it very well and very respectfully and I can’t help but think it’s due to the diversity of the group. In contrast when one of the players in the all male group plays a female character it’s offensive and sexist and I struggle with curbing that behavior.
Most of the tables I've played at in the past year have been through the D&D virtual weekends. I've been impressed with how welcoming and safe the tables have been. I have no idea how diverse those tables have been since those tables are focused on getting the adventure done in usually 4 hours; we interact by playing the game. The people I play with continually change and I've been able to play with people from geographic regions I probably would never have played with outside of conventions. I've enjoyed playing with many new people this last year; I hope that the virtual weekends have been welcoming to a diverse audience as they have been to me and my diversity issues. It seems that many of the organizations running virtual events are doing their best to create welcoming, safe environments for people to play D&D.
With that said, Hasbro needs to do a better job at anticipating how their rule sets may encourage unwelcoming or unsafe tables. Right now, Hasbro relies on the good judgement of ground-level organizations and game masters concerning what rules and language to allow at the table.
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The tables I ran/participated in pre-covid, both those at the library group I spear headed and the AL games I attended at an FLGS were all white. In the case of the library group, the small town was very white, so % wise it was reflective of the community; the FLGS town was more ethnically diverse, so It wouldn't surprise me at all if there wasn't some systemic/"subtle"/unconscious racism going on there keeping the tables white. Mostly male, but some female; To my knowledge none were non-binary or trans, but it's entirely possible I wouldn't necessarily know. No idea of orientation of those at the FLGS; library group had at least two gay members, at least a couple that identify as "mostly straight" and one ace.
The online group I run, of people I know in-person, includes ace and straight individuals; in at least one case, I don't know the player's orientation; I've assumed straight, but I only now realized that's probably cultural hetero-normativity at work. To my knowledge everyone is cis, but again that's an assumption I'm making.
I'm also in a play-by-post here, and for the most part I don't know race/orientation/gender identity for my fellow players in that group.
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I'm on the Autism Spectrum and have ADHD, and one of my players has ADHD, but otherwise, we're not the most diverse group around. None of us are LGBTQ+ (as far as I know), all of us are white, but we semi-regularly have 1-2 females in our group. This is mostly due to the fact that my 2 most common players are my cousins, and we live in a small farm town that's mostly white (my town does have a decent sized Hispanic population, but our town is very segregated, so none of us really had any Hispanic friends in school or other activities).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
My group:
I'm a bicurious white male
Bisexual Hispanic female
Straight Hispanic female
Straight white male x2
Bisexual white male
I've joked a few times that I'm the token straight person in a few of my regular gaming groups. Gender expression and sexuality are pretty diverse, but not so much racially. I mostly play with friends and people I've known for a long time, and didn't grow up around much integrated racial diversity so that probably explains that. I'd be happy to play in even more diverse groups but I'm old enough that the groups I play with don't often get in genuinely new players so there's not much of an 'intake stream' there.
I will say that the more diverse the group the more I tend to enjoy it these days. I would not be in a rush to get into a game full of only other straight white dudes at this point, it would feel weird and echo-chamber-ey to me now.
Out of four D&D games that I'm playing or GMing at the moment, I believe that there are a total of two cisgender heterosexual participants.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The people I have played DnD with have been mostly LGBTQIA+. I come from a small hick town so all of my players have been white. As for gender, my current group is made up of myself a trans woman, an enby, an egg (someone who is unsure of their gender), and 5 guys. The group I currently play with has the most cisgender heterosexual people I've ever had in one group: 4, which is just over half of the group.
call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
I find the sort of census taking going on in the response to this post a bit curious. It's literally privileged information (in that folks should always feel privileged when someone shares something personal with them) and some may feel free to disseminate, some as has been stated may not be comfortable sharing such information on understandable protective grounds or simple ettiquette, and then there are folks who may just not really know some or all the people they play with that well outside of gametime. I fall in the latter two categories of those speculated possibilities. So rather than performance in accords to the threads rapidly adopted self-audit format, a few thoughts:
1.) I imagine folks who play at diverse tables are folks who live and socialize in diverse communities. In other words the bulk of diverse tables I'm imagining are reflective of the diversity of where they're located or the community they've found within that location (or virtual space for those who play through online LFG type venues) rather than intentional or designed with diversity as an actual goal for the table. In other words, diverse gaming tables are more likely epiphenomenal or a chicken and egg thing to the communities within which the gamers find themself rather than a particular catalyst for the creation of diversity.
2.) Which goes back to begging the questions or framework from this thread's initial ask. I don't believe the creation or fostering of diverse tables fully hits the mark as to what the OP speculates is "a big thing in D&D right now." I don't believe it is the case that the publishers and designers of Dungeons and Dragons have "diversity" at the level of the specific gaming tables as an end goal. Rather, the "big thing in D&D right now" from the designers' perspective seems to be inclusivity and accessibility. Monotype make ups of your game group does not mean your game group is failing at Dungeons and Dragons. Rather the goal of inclusivity and accessibility is that the product of Dungeons and Dragons is thoughtfully designed so that it can be played by anyone. I do believe the present design team and its supporters are sincere in their expressed desire for all folks however they identify to feel welcome to play Dungeons and Dragons; but it's also simple best business practice to be inclusive because market forces are increasingly diverse (that chicken and egg thing again, served differently).
3.) I still find it curious that so much marketing fanfare (and reiteration of said fanfare in the gaming press) of Tasha's and now Van Richten's have dedicated chapter space in their books on Session 0 social contracts and then more specifically personal boundaries / comfort levels relating to trauma, and these writings are lauded as innovations to gaming, when frankly, those struck me as simply codifications of informally held and maintained best practices within what I'd call "good game groups" that had been in place before I started playing 30 years ago. It's like there was an inclusive game culture and then one of the preeminent TTRPG publishes the practices of that culture as rulesets ... to be consumed by the culture that was engaged in those practices already. I guess it's another sort of chicken and egg thing of the accountability (publishers) and validation (community) variety. I guess a key factor is that there's a broader social discourse over diversity, equity, and inclusion so the concepts have been made a lot more accessible.
In the end, whether you play at a diverse table, intentionally or not, or a table of a more mono makeup, as long as everyone plays in a welcoming spirit, everyone is participating in the player community's diverse spectrum. There's room for everyone, it's just being made more explicit as of late.
I apologize if anyone found this pedantic but I think some of the distinctions I'm making are key to understanding "the big deal in D&D right now" versus the muddled impression conveyed in the OP.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There is benefit to codifying best practices though, because I know for certain that not all groups gamed that way, so transmitting those best practices will help propagate them through the gaming community. As well, these kinds of initiatives serve as a signal that DNDBeyond is an inclusive and welcoming company. Certainly they are considering their bottom line, but it also just seems to be the ethical thing to do.
I, for one, think there's value in that being made more explicit.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Myself I am your boring white male and my preferred pronouns are He, Him, Dude and I only have 1 requirement for gaming at my table be polite and respect everyone else at the table. I do not care the color of skin, Religion followed, sexual preferences, or even the fact of being transgendered or whatever else folks see themselves as. Just treat others as you wished to be treated.
I'm a white, cisgender hetero DM on the autism spectrum (the last part can make some aspects of the hobby difficult for me, but I enjoy doing it overall). As for my players, one of them is also on the spectrum. I did have a gay player in one campaign I ran last year but I haven't heard from him in a while. Beyond that, I'm unaware of the ethnicities of most of my players unless they mention it explicitly since I don't play with video, and I don't generally inquire about their sexual preferences (or lack thereof) either (to be clear, it's not that I have an "over there" mindset to these things, it's just never really occurred to me to ask and I'd have no problem with my players offering such information freely). I do make sure to ask about which pronouns my players want to be referred with before I play with them, and so far as I can tell my current group is pretty much cisgender.
Of course, I'm obviously open to anyone joining my games as long as they're cool people and have a respectful, open-minded attitude.
My primary friend group has 4 black men including myself, 2 indian men, 1 guyanese man, 1 white woman and 1 asian woman.
I run a game for my sister which is 2 black women, 2 white men, 1 white women and myself as a black man
A friend of mine from playing fighting games runs a discord game for us which is 6 black men, and 2 white men
And I recently started running for a new group which has 5 black men, 1 hispanic man, 1 native pacific islander woman, 1 mixed asian woman and the last guy I'm not actually sure what race he is lmao but I assume he's black
And across the groups all of us are cis as far as I'm knowledgeable with some leaning gender queer. Our sexualities range although the majority are straight but not all, there are some homosexual and bi people in our groups
(I'm going to assume DNDBeyond was typo and we both know we're talking about Wizards when we're talking about the designers of Tasha's and VRGtoR. I was happy to see the Pride article yesterday on this site, but I'll get back to DNDBeyond in a moment).
Well, I don't know about how ethical it is. Frankly, when I'm cynical about this I think it's not accountability at all by the designers, but blame shifting. WotC has received flack for its problems in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion (as you often strike me as a generally aware poster, I won't belabor that but will if you want that claim fleshed out) and issues some press owning some of their mistakes, making some editorial fixes to a few problematic representations, but the most substantive in terms of word and page counts in books are instructions to the player community as to how the game should be played (to the tune of a word count which Monte Cooke Games handled much more succinctly while also saying so much more)? They know what's frankly "playing style guidance" for DMs in an optional expansion book is "take it or leave it" (one presumes one would want to present a welcoming playing style, but we know from some participants on this very board that that is actually not the case). Meanwhile the jury is still out whether WotC is truly a "welcoming inclusive company" in the way it actually operates (notably as an employer or more explicitly determiner of "who gets to design Dungeons and Dragons officially"), a way outside of coopting established practices and bandwagoning them in a way that makes them look like they're in a position of leadership on the issue. That might not be ethical so much as obscurantist. It's not a hard position I hold to, but it's a thought that passes my mind a lot.
There's actual leadership in making something more explicit, then there's capitalizing through coopting a norm. I'd like to think Wizards is trying beyond good business, but I'm not entirely convinced (nor am I entirely dismissive of some of their gestures). Your and my standards, or how we evaluate progress, may just be different.
So to circle back to the value and choices of how one makes ones values explicit re: DND Beyond. A year ago today I think was when DDB announced it would donate half of its featured dice sales for a week to Black Lives Matter (they might have extended it longer, I'm just going off the press at the time circulated with the announcement, which is all a basic Google on the matter digs up, usually indicative of their being little if any follow up press). I don't know how much was actually donated (see prior parenthetical) but I sometimes wonder if the money might have been better spent on DDB developing its own internal moderation policies (rant truncated because that's starting to migrate from topic).
To return to topic, I guess my beef with this thread's framing and the bulk of the responses is that it prompts most folks to respond with what I've described as "census" response or "boxes checked." There's the rub, people, like corporations, when it comes to diversity and inclusion are all too ready to provide some sort of self-certification that they've "done the work." Those gestures forget that inclusiveness requires intentionality. No one gets a boxed check because of their table's census figures. On the contrary, being welcoming is a constant work in progress, it's doing the work. I feel it would have been better to not ask "describe your table's make up along established diversity spectrums" but instead simply ask "what do you do as DMs and players to assure that your game is welcoming?" That's a harder but a nevertheless better ask than reflecting on the demographics of one's geography and how they inform who shows up at your table.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
This is an interesting thread. If one were to read this and generalize D&D groups based on these responses, it would seem that not many cisgendered, straight people play D&D. Compare that to the actual percentages of each group in the whole population of the world.
So either this topic attracts attention from people that don't identify as cisgendered straight etc, or D&D as a whole has become very inclusive, which is a good thing. I would certainly like to play with more people from different nationalities etc. Finding a 2nd group isn't easy though, as I want a group that's mature and gender-diverse.
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I'm a generic AF cishet white dude DM who has two tables, one is 3 cishet white men and 1 cisbi white woman. My other table is 2 cishet white men and 2 cishet white women. Not the most diverse group, but that being said, I'm not going to go out looking for marginalised folx to fill a quote to make myself feel good, that's not the point. I will however do everything I can to make my table a safe, welcoming and inviting space.
I think as far as this thread goes, there's likely a multitude of factors. I honestly hope D&D is becoming more inclusive and that this thread is representative of that, and my experience does seem to reflect that. I also think there's a correlation between the kind of people that feel there's a value sharing in a thread like this and those people having diverse tables. It's a self-selection bias a bit.
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I think this is definitely true. There is always going to be a bias for that.
Also, though, I think this is a reflection on wider society. A couple of years ago, I would have had no idea what "cishet" meant. I would have understood many different sexualities etc, but there would still have been many labels I didn't understand. I also wouldn't have understood why people would want to label themselves, and few but close friends would have talked to me of their sexuality/gender/etc. It didn't affect me when I did find out about someone, but I didn't know about most.
For me, I have seen a radical shift in the past couple of years. I now know more about the sexuality and gender of acquaintances than I have ever done before, whether online or in person, social or professional. It has become much more acceptable to discuss these topics with virtual strangers, which is great. I have a better understanding of why people want the labels, a better understanding of the people I am communicating with in general.
Now, I may be late to the party. I am a cishet white male, working in a male dominated industry, and I'm an introvert who doesn't socialise much outside his small group of friends. However, I can only see these recent (to me) moves as overwhelmingly positive.
Back to the opening topic: My current game is at a table with 1 cisbi male, 1 cisbi female, and 2 other females who have not yet shared these details with the group. All of us are White British. There are 2 with confirmed ADHD, one of those also with Aspergers, and none of us are neurotypical.
My table is 60% female, but other than that we're a pretty typical group.
I approach "diversity at the table" the same way I do people in general. I honestly don't care what race/ethnicity/gender/etc somebody is. I form my opinions of people based on how they act. For D&D that means they want to play D&D with me and aren't jerks with bonus points to creativity and a good sense of humor.
That being said at my current game I'm a straight white guy playing a female aasimar teenager, the DM is Mexican by both ethnicity and nationality, and the other two are guys from somewhere in the US (I don't know their races/ethnicities and I honestly don't care). I had been playing in a game until recently (DM's got a new job and became unavailable) that was four American men (one of whom is gay and lives in Japan), one Australian guy, and the sixth player and DM are both Australian women. I'm planning to take over as DM for the second group as soon as I come up with a decent start to a campaign. Obviously these are both online games. With my overnight schedule I'm only normally available to play consistently late morning and very early afternoon by my time, so my main selection criterion for gaming associates is "will/can they play at this time?" Hence being in a game with 4 of 7 members being on the other side of the planet.
Whoever wants to play, plays. The End.
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My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
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I’m a brown cis heterosexual male and I DM two groups. One is entirely composed of 3-4 players all like me and the other is two brown men, two brown women, and one white man. I’m not aware of everyone’s sexual orientation in that second group but everyone is cis.
These are all people I know in real life, though. If I were starting a game online with complete strangers I would take diversity into account when building up a group, not in a box ticking/tokenism way but I would make a strong effort to avoid a homogeneous group vis a vis gender identity, race, sexual orientation, class, or neurodiversity.
Not only do I believe it to be the right thing to do, I also genuinely believe it makes the game better and (provided everyone is open) enriches the experience by exposing people to different views and life experiences.
As an aside one of the female players in my mixed groups is playing a male character and one of the male players is playing a female character and both RP it very well and very respectfully and I can’t help but think it’s due to the diversity of the group. In contrast when one of the players in the all male group plays a female character it’s offensive and sexist and I struggle with curbing that behavior.
Most of the tables I've played at in the past year have been through the D&D virtual weekends. I've been impressed with how welcoming and safe the tables have been. I have no idea how diverse those tables have been since those tables are focused on getting the adventure done in usually 4 hours; we interact by playing the game. The people I play with continually change and I've been able to play with people from geographic regions I probably would never have played with outside of conventions. I've enjoyed playing with many new people this last year; I hope that the virtual weekends have been welcoming to a diverse audience as they have been to me and my diversity issues. It seems that many of the organizations running virtual events are doing their best to create welcoming, safe environments for people to play D&D.
With that said, Hasbro needs to do a better job at anticipating how their rule sets may encourage unwelcoming or unsafe tables. Right now, Hasbro relies on the good judgement of ground-level organizations and game masters concerning what rules and language to allow at the table.