As pandemic restrictions lift across Australia and more face-to-face activities resume, socialising can be a source of profound anxiety for many people. But what if, when you met up with others, you don’t have to be yourself? If decision-making is done through a character you create and consequences determined by the roll of dice?
Since its inception in the mid-1970s, the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) has brought together a far more diverse array of players than its stereotypes suggest. Earlier this year, the game’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, released a report showing that, of its estimated 50 million players, 54% were younger than 30 and 40% identified as female. What it didn’t reveal was the rise in visibility of queer and neurodiverse players.
“It has always been a safe haven for folks who might not feel at home elsewhere,” says the game’s principal rules designer, Jeremy Crawford. “D&D is about a group of people with wildly different pasts coming together to create an intentional family and overcome adversity. A group of players are stronger because of their differences from each other. You don’t want four fighters; you want a fighter, a cleric, a rogue and a wizard. In other words, you want a group that is powerful because of its diversity.”
Dungeons & Dragons is guided by a Dungeon Master who takes a group of players through an adventure set in an imaginary world. Photograph: Morfon Media/Alamy
To play, a storyteller – known in the game as the Dungeon Master, or DM – takes a group of players through an adventure set in an imaginary world. It is their role to bring that world to life around the players, describe or enact the characters or creatures they meet, and to roll the dice that decide the outcomes of the party’s decisions. Games can involve more than a dozen players, but most feature four to six players who gather around a table with books, dice, pencil and paper. Some may join via Zoom; sometimes miniatures, figurines and maps can be used to illustrate the adventure.
For people such as Shadia Hancock, the founder of advocacy group Autism Actually and Dungeon Master to a group of young neurodiverse players, the therapeutic potential of the game has always been clear.
“It’s about creating a sense of community,” Hancock says. “I work out the players’ expectations at the beginning of a game. Some get really into creating their characters, some are more interested in finding items and exploring the world, others are really interested …….