Arts, Faculty of
Theatre and Film, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
McIntyre, Kayla
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
At its core, Dungeons and Dragons immerses players in a dual reality. Led by a storytelling Dungeon Master (DM), players toggle between the immediate reality of the gameplay and the fictional narrative setting of the game’s campaign. Each player creates a character through which to navigate the fictional narrative setting. For many, character creation offers a means to imagine and assemble a collection of traits that go far beyond what is permissible outside the fictional world. Working from a theatre and performance studies perspective, I explore the contours of these traits and the details of the costumes, properties, and other theatrical elements that shape the characters. More specifically, I focus on how these traits and choices connect with minoritarian gender and sexual identities outside the game. I first consider a recent play and performance, both of which feature D&D and explorations of queer identity: Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters (SKM); and DNDQ Live’s touring (2021-present) production of Dungeons and Drag Queens (DNDQ). Both examples feature D&D gameplay in which themes of gender and sexual identity are central to their young adult characters’ identities. Grounded in the theories of Judith Butler, Jose Esteban Muñoz and Bo Ruberg, I highlight key themes and actions in these plays that suggest how D&D gaming can foster positive expressions of queer identity. In chapter three, I share data from voluntary research interviews I conducted with self-identified queer, young adult (18-30) D&D players. In these interviews I asked questions aimed at understanding the interviewees lived experiences with D&D gaming, including game performance and in-scene choices, particularly in light of consciously expressed gender and sexual identity. Using Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s 2022 reflexive thematic analysis, I coded and analyzed the data to identify themes describing how players understand and navigate the dual realities at play within the game and their individual sense of identity outside the game. In light of the evidence shared in both chapters, I conclude by arguing that D&D can offer generative opportunities for members of LGBTQ2SIA+ communities to consider constructs like gender and sexual identity through their explorations in game performance.
ROLL FOR INITIATIVE: ROLE PLAYING & PLAYING A ROLE— QUEER REPRESENTATIONS IN D&D by Kayla McIntyre B.A., The University of British Columbia, 2023 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Theatre) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2025 © Kayla McIntyre, 2025 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Roll for Initiative: Role Playing & Playing a Role- Queer Representations in D&D submitted by Kayla McIntyre in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Theatre Examining Committee: Dr. Kirsty Johnston, Professor & Department Head, Theatre Studies, UBC Co-supervisor Dr. Julia Henderson, Assistant Professor, Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy, UBC Co-supervisor Dr. Siyuan Liu, Professor, Theatre Studies, UBC Additional Examiner iii Abstract At its core, Dungeons and Dragons immerses players in a dual reality. Led by a storytelling Dungeon Master (DM), players toggle between the immediate reality of the gameplay and the fictional narrative setting of the game’s campaign. Each player creates a character through which to navigate the fictional narrative setting. For many, character creation offers a means to imagine and assemble a collection of traits that go far beyond what is permissible outside the fictional world. Working from a theatre and performance studies perspective, I explore the contours of these traits and the details of the costumes, properties, and other theatrical elements that shape the characters. More specifically, I focus on how these traits and choices connect with minoritarian gender and sexual identities outside the game. I first consider a recent play and performance, both of which feature D&D and explorations of queer identity: Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters (SKM); and DNDQ Live’s touring (2021-present) production of Dungeons and Drag Queens (DNDQ). Both examples feature D&D gameplay in which themes of gender and sexual identity are central to their young adult characters’ identities. Grounded in the theories of Judith Butler, Jose Esteban Muñoz and Bo Ruberg, I highlight key themes and actions in these plays that suggest how D&D gaming can foster positive expressions of queer identity. In chapter three, I share data from voluntary research interviews I conducted with self-identified queer, young adult (18-30) D&D players. In these interviews I asked questions aimed at understanding the interviewees lived experiences with D&D gaming, including game performance and in-scene choices, particularly in light of consciously expressed gender and sexual identity. Using Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s 2022 reflexive thematic analysis, I coded and analyzed the data to identify themes describing how players understand and navigate the dual realities at play within the game and their individual sense of identity outside the game. iv In light of the evidence shared in both chapters, I conclude by arguing that D&D can offer generative opportunities for members of LGBTQ2SIA+ communities to consider constructs like gender and sexual identity through their explorations in game performance. v Lay Summary During the 1980’s Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) rose to popularity. Since its conception, initially, the game did not account for queer players. Over the last couple of decades, D&D has begun to regain its popularity, this time garnering the attention of LGBTQ2SIA+ players, furthering associated representation. This thesis examines how members of the LGBTQ2SIA+ community have used the game since its creation to explore constructs such as gender and sexual identity. To illuminate my inquiry, I centralize two performances, Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters (SKM) and DNDQ Live’s touring production of Dungeons and Drag Queens. I then, in chapter three, conduct six interviews with queer, young-adult, avid D&D players and share their personal accounts of how they use the game to explore queerness. vi Preface This thesis is an original, unpublished, independent work of the author, Kayla McIntyre. The research within this thesis was approved by the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board, certificate number: H23-03172. No generative artificial intelligence tools were used in the research, writing, or development of this thesis. Research in Chapter 1 draws on unpublished work submitted and presented during my MA in Dr. Siyuan Liu’s THTR 500 class Dr. Keren Zaiontz’s THTR 562 class. Research in Chapter 2 draws on unpublished work submitted and presented during my MA in Dr. Olivia Michiko Gagnon’s THTR 445 class. In Chapter 3, due to the interviews yielding such rich data, under the continued supervision of Dr. Julia Henderson, we intend to consider further publication. vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii Glossary ........................................................................................................................................ ix Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 1.1 ROLL FOR HISTORY ................................................................................................... 1 1.2 HISTORY OF D&D: Context for contemporary homebrew practices .......................... 3 1.3 D&D and QUEER IDENTITY ....................................................................................... 5 1.4 CREATING CHARACTER: Self Reflexivity, Utopia, & Queerness ............................ 8 1.5 ROLE FOR PERFORMANCE: Theatricality in D&D ................................................ 15 1.6 BACKSTORY: Researcher Positionality ..................................................................... 19 1.7 RESEARCH QUESTION, METHODOLOGY & RESEARCH: PROJECT OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................. 23 Chapter 2: She Kills Monsters / Dungeons and Drag Queens ....................................................25 2.1 SHE KILLS MONSTERS ............................................................................................ 27 2.2 DUNGEONS & DRAG QUEENS ............................................................................... 41 2.3 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 51 Chapter 3: Reporting Participant Experiences Playing D&D and Identity Experimentation in Game .........................................................................................................................................53 3.1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 53 viii 3.2 LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................. 53 3.3 STUDY PURPOSE & RESEARCH QUESTION ........................................................ 59 3.4 STUDY DESIGN.......................................................................................................... 60 3.5 RECRUITMENT .......................................................................................................... 60 3.6 DATA COLLECTION ................................................................................................. 61 3.7 DATA ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................... 62 3.8 ESTABLISHING TRUSTWORTHINESS .................................................................. 63 3.9 DESCRIPTION OF SAMPLE ...................................................................................... 64 3.10 THEMATIC FINDINGS .............................................................................................. 65 3.10.1 DUNGEONS and DRAGONS: PLAYER CONTEXT ........................................ 65 3.10.2 D&D PARTIES .................................................................................................... 70 3.10.3 CHARACTER CREATION ................................................................................. 76 3.11 DISCUSSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ...................................................................... 86 3.12 LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................. 91 3.13 INTERVIEW ANALYSIS CONCLUSIONS............................................................... 92 Chapter 4: Conclusion .................................................................................................................96 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................100 Appendices ..................................................................................................................................105 Appendix A Information and Consent Form .......................................................................... 105 Appendix B Recruitment Poster ............................................................................................. 109 Appendix C Demographic Data Form .................................................................................... 110 Appendix D Sample Questions ............................................................................................... 112 ix Glossary • 5e: The fifth edition of the game, Dungeons and Dragons. • A “check”: An in-game measurement of how well a player can do a task, for example, how well they can investigate a crime scene. A check is determined by a player rolling a die and adding any modifiers their PC might have. • Critical Success: The player roles a die and receives the highest outcome. So, if they roll a D20, they get a 20. A critical success impacts the player’s game performance positively, taking the story in a direction they favour. • D20: A twenty-sided die. Dice are often described in this manner, for example: D4 (a four-sided die), D6 (a six-sided die), D10 (a ten-sided die), D12 (a twelve-sided die), D100 (a one-hundred-sided die). • D&D: Abbreviation for Dungeons and Dragons. • Discord: An instant messaging social platform. Styles of communication can vary per user preference such as video call, voice channels and calls, text threads, media sharing, and screen sharing. Often used for online gaming. • DM: Abbreviation for “Dungeon Master.” The facilitator of a table-top-roleplaying-game (TTRPG). • DNDQ: Abbreviation for Dungeons and Drag Queens’ touring production name. • GM: Abbreviation for “Game Master.” As DM is a trademarked term, GM is more commonly used to avoid legal troubles with D&D’s parent company. • Homebrew: a practice where a DM will start with the pre-existing mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons and create their own setting, backstory, non-playable characters x (NPCs). Sometimes they also introduce new classes of characters, weapons, races/ species, and abilities. The DM will use the foundations offered by Dungeons and Dragons’ parent company Wizards of the Coast, but will map their narrative over these foundations, only referencing them as they see fit. These homebrew worlds can encompass a plethora of references or draw from the pre-existing worlds. • Minis: Short for miniature figurines. Little props that resemble characters, foes, and items in the game. Can either be pre-made and bought or handmade. In the instance of pre-bought miniatures, they often come as a blank canvas allowing players creative control to paint them as they see fit. • Modifiers: A number one adds to their rolls of a specific type (for example, performance, dexterity, or acrobatics) determining ones strengthens or weakness in a certain skill. • Nat One (Natural One): The opposite of a critical success is a critical failure, or in other terms a “nat one” (natural one). A nat one alters the story’s progression in a way that was not the player’s original intention. • NPC: Abbreviation for “non-playable character.” Characters that players do not get to portray. The DM typically plays all NPCs in a game. • PC: Abbreviation for “player character”. The character that is controlled by a player. • Railroad: A DM who “railroads” a campaign is an individual who has a clear storyline envisioned and continuously leads all players back to this storyline, preventing tangents and exploration, dismissing newly introduced improvisational story beats, and minimizing exploratory opportunities for fear they might slow or disrupt the game’s progress. xi • Roll20: Players use Roll20 as an online platform to play table-top-role-playing games (TTRPGs), otherwise known as a virtual tabletop. While using the platform, players can access benefits like sound effects, rulebooks, dice bots, text/voice chat, tokens (an online alternative to minis), and character sheets. DMs/ GMs can upload their own art and session maps to personalize the gameplay. • RPG: Abbreviation for “roleplaying game.” • SKM: Abbreviation for Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters. • TTRPG: Abbreviation for “table-top-roleplaying-game.” xii Acknowledgements I am a firm believer that you are a product of the community that supports and raises you. Every single person mentioned has at one point or another reinvigorated my love for research or challenged my thinking. This thesis could not have been produced without the following individuals, Dr. Kirsty Johnston, I thank you for continuously instilling a sense of optimism and delight towards my academic pursuits. For your continued kindness and support. Thank you for reminding me of what a joy it is to write. I truly appreciate your rigorous approach to our meetings and your thoughtful responses to my questions. Having access to your expertise has shaped my work for the better. I cannot thank you enough. Dr. Julia Henderson, I thank you for all the generosity you have shown me as your student and GRA. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback and consistency. I am truly grateful to have had the experiences watching you work and learning your processes that would then go on to inspire and shape my approach to my thesis as a whole, but particularly chapter three. You have always been a constant beacon of support and warmth and I am forever grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from you. To Dr. Siyuan Liu, thank you for your encouraging support in the beginning of this process and for coming on for the last leg of the journey as a second reader. xiii To my friend and fellow MA accomplice, Mikayla Kwan, thank you for your countless memes that kept me going and for always being a text away. I thank you endlessly for the laughter we have shared over our experiences and for the comfort you gave me of knowing I am not alone in this. To the many faculty members that indulged me in conversations around this topic or my future pursuits in the field and offered their generous insights, Dr. Olivia Michiko Gagnon, Dr. Hallie Marshall, Dr. Keren Zaiontz, Leora Morris, and Marios Kallos — thank you all. To the THFL department’s amazing staff. Most notably, Linda Pitt for her aid in recruitment and Mia Booth for her quick problem-solving skills, always reassuring me that academically I am on the right track. I am eternally grateful for those who have helped finically aid my scholarship. Thank you to: UBC Faculty of Arts, the Dorothy Somerset Memorial Scholarship Committee, the Errol Durbach Graduate Scholarship Committee, and the SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Master's Award Committee. To my interviewees— your stories moved me. Thank you for sharing your passion, enthusiasm, and time with me. After each interview I left feeling inspired and filled with new ideas. Your contributions have been significant to my research and for that I wish you all nothing but good ol’ Nat 20’s. xiv My darling wife, Cass McKenzie, for first and foremost introducing me to the game (and being the greatest DM of all time), but beyond that, for your continuous support and unwavering love— thank you for never judging my 3 am ponderings, for always keeping me caffeinated, watered, and fed on the days I refused to unstick myself from the computer. Thank you for reminding me that fresh air exists and how much I thrive on walks. It is a privilege to both know and love you. Words simply cannot describe the impact you have had on my life, so since we have the rest of our lives together, I will continue to shower you with the same love and support for all your endeavours. Thank you to all my friends and family that always cheered me on… but most specially my cat, Fajita, for hopping on my keyboard whenever she sensed I needed time away from thinking. And lastly, to my greatest inspiration in creating this thesis, the coolest adventurers on Pachatol, the folks over at Tempest HQ: Lark Smark, LSQ, Teva Mossbottom, Celestine, and Nyx. I would adventure anywhere with the likes of you, forever and always. And with that, we venture onwards...1 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 ROLL FOR HISTORY Over the past few decades, the game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), has become an appealing way for queer people to explore their identity through gameplay. While there has been a rise in scholarship concerning this topic from a range of social science and humanities perspectives, fewer studies have explored the phenomenon from a performance and theatre studies perspective. This is the work I pursue here as Dungeons and Dragons gameplay involves a great deal of theatrical and performative activity. D&D is an imaginative tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) that emphasizes immersion. It is this immersive element that prompted David Ewalt in his book Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and the People Who Play It, to differentiate the game from “board games, which limit the player to a small set of actions, or video games, which offer a large but finite set of preprogrammed possibilities, role playing games give the player free will” (8). Players embark on campaigns within fantastical worlds using characters they create. In this open-world fantasy landscape, their characters navigate through a series of complex dice rolls. The adventure play is facilitated by a narrating Dungeon Master (DM) who connects the players to the imaginary landscape of the game. In collaboration with their DM, players create characters that they then use to navigate the game’s fictional world. In this thesis I investigate the theatrical elements embedded in the overall game structure of Dungeons and Dragons and try to understand how and why players with queer minoritarian identities have been drawn to the game and used these elements. I build from my practical understanding of the game which is rooted in longstanding gameplay experience as both a player and DM. I also build from theatre and performance studies precepts, game studies and 2 performance analyses and interviews with contemporary players. Overall, I argue that D&D provides a generative, imaginative, playful and appealing performance opportunity to members of LGBTQ2SIA+ communities interested in exploring gender and sexual identity constructs and expressions. D&D includes many elements that are theatrical and/or performative. Players create characters through an imaginative assemblage of traits, costumes, props and other theatrical elements involved in designing characters. Through these characters and in response to the chance of dice rolls and player interactions, players improvise in the game live. Thus, while some of this assemblage and design is driven by the DM or player, other aspects are left to chance. In roleplaying games (RPGs), dice are a critical aspect of gameplay. They embed chance and improvisational whim into the overall campaign narrative. In key moments, the dungeon master (DM)/ game master (GM) who leads the game will require a player to roll a die to determine how successful a player is at completing a task. If a player rolls a critical success, it means that they succeed the check (an in-game measurement of how well a player can do a task, for example, how well they can investigate a crime scene) by rolling the highest number of the die before accounting for modifiers in areas such as strength, charisma, or persuasion. A critical success impacts the player’s game performance positively, taking the story in a direction they favour. If they were to do the reverse, however, and roll a critical failure, or in other terms a “nat one” (natural one), they alter the story’s progression in a way that was not the original intention. Dice rolls are therefore an imperative mechanic to the overall performance’s directionality and tone. As they roll dice, player characters (PCs) act as co-writers of the game. They are agents (Smith 239) in the narrative as they explore and interact with the world around them. 3 The DM/GM sets and enforces the rules of play for the session or greater campaign. They also select a story, either one that is predesigned, or one that is a “homebrew”. A homebrew is a narrative that is designed for a particular set of players. A homebrew takes inspiration from the source D&D material but also introduces elements that are not accounted for in the game’s textbook. In a game, the DM co-performs alongside the other players and acts as narrator, guide and arbiter of the world the players explore. They set the scene and oftentimes leave it open-ended. For example, they might say to a player, “‘xyz’ is before you, what do you do?”. In this way the DM and players are in regular conversation about the possibilities of the in-game world. The DM will respond to the players’ improvisations and together their discussions and actions form the story. As we shall see, DMs play a pivotal role in the performances I will analyse in chapter two and the interview data I will share in chapter three. It is important to note, however, that they are featured in D&D play generally, not just the homebrew and queer-affirming gameplay centered in this study. To further distinguish the specific kinds of D&D gameplay that I focus on in this thesis, it is useful to have a sense of the general origins and features of D&D. 1.2 HISTORY OF D&D: Context for contemporary homebrew practices In the 1960s, RPGs like D&D developed out of wargames. Oftentimes, wargames consisted of a minimum of two players engaged in an orchestrated battle of army figures performing and commanding their armies in combat settings (Smith 240). Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were deeply embedded in wargame player groups. Through their mutual passion they developed an altered system of the game which encouraged the construction and exploration of fantasy elements. Their custom modifications quickly rose in popularity which prompted them to release a rulebook. This became the basis for Dungeons & Dragons. As opposed to wargames, RPGs 4 encourage performance beyond battle simulation. While combat remains a core feature of the game, in RPGs it serves a larger fantastical narrative. Players fight because they are emotionally invested in the narrative and combat to move the story forward. As the game rose in popularity in the 1980s, players’ intense emotional investment in these narratives and their connection to fantastical violence led some to label the game as dangerous. David Waldron traces the game’s history in relation to conservative critics and has described this time as a “moral panic” (4). In this period, many conservative Christian and parent groups (Martin & Fine 108) attempted to ban RPGs due to their perceived promotion of satanic rituals. During these protests, groups demanded banishment in entirety. Members of the U.S. congress were petitioned to pass laws demanding RPGs require warning labels, reports of suicides and other crimes believed to be inspired by RPGs were published, and talk shows (60 Minutes, for example) featured members of anti-RPG groups promoting hatred and hysteria towards these games (Waldron 9-15). Despite the protests, the game prevailed. For many players, Dungeons and Dragons offers a valuable social setting for structured interactive play involving a multitude of quests, adventures and character formation opportunities. Friendships and communities often formed and strengthened around these play-based activities (Kemp 82). I am particularly interested here in how minoritarian communities have engaged with the game and reconfigured it to serve their community interests by using homebrew and other game mechanics. To understand this dynamic, it is important first to explain what the term “homebrewing” means in this context. Homebrewing is a practice where a DM will start with the pre-existing mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons (typically the fifth edition of the game, although at the time of writing, Wizards of the Coast has released a new 2024 ruleset that has received mixed reviews) and create their own setting, backstory, and non-playable characters 5 (NPCs). Sometimes they also introduce new classes, weapons, races/ species, and abilities. The DM will use the foundations offered by Dungeons and Dragons’ parent company Wizards of the Coast, but will map their narrative over these foundations, only referencing them as they see fit. In these circumstances, the DM directs and writes a world unique to their gameplay desires. Playing D&D can result in a one-shot (a solo or stand-alone game), a session (one session of a larger campaign), or a campaign (a lengthy adventure that is oftentimes broken into sessions). These homebrew worlds can encompass a plethora of references or draw from the pre-existing worlds. For example, they could introduce elements of pop-culture (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Cyberpunk, Star Wars, etc.…), they could trade in popular or niche memes, they could emulate or cite other media, or they might draw on personalized inside jokes among the players. 1.3 D&D and QUEER IDENTITY Integrating the queer community into D&D was not an explicit goal of the game’s originators (Yessler & Craig 2). Indeed, scholars Daniel Martin and Gary Alan Fine have noted the specific exclusion of women (and by extent, trans people) within some male-dominated gaming communities that did not want to have women at the table while they played out their violent fantasies; the most violent episodes in Dungeons & Dragons appear to occur in all-male groups. Female fantasy gamers are rare and considered by some male gamers to be an inhibiting force to fantasy play, especially where this play includes violent episodes such as the rape of a nonplayer character. (Martin & Fine 113) 6 As repellent as such toxic gaming practices might be for many people, there is an open-endedness to the game’s structure that also draws very different kinds of player communities. Since D&D’s inception in the 1960s women have been the minority in gaming (Lien 9), and these RPG spaces have typically remained exclusionary towards women and queer players in public perception. Nathaniel L. Rogers in their 2020 thesis, “‘A World Where They Belonged’: Queer Women’s Use of a Dungeons & Dragons Game to Experiment With, Express, and Explore Identity” recounts the history of female presence in D&D. The author points to the first edition of the game and how “female characters in that edition were penalized with limits to their strength attribute, which communicates how the game creators saw women in relation to men (e.g., weak)” (12). Due to this depiction of women, Rogers argues that prevailing game practices neither welcomed women nor viewed them as potential players, as women had no characters and were thus not on par with men (12). However, the game during this period failed to consider that, in the game, “the identity we are associated with is not always the identity that we consider our primary identity” (Rogers 9). The game leaves room, in other words, for creativity beyond the prevailing heteronormative and patriarchal norms. Homebrew approaches have drawn queer communities of play together. Such expansions beyond the original D&D format have also garnered attention in a range of other media. See for example, The Adventure Zone podcast by Griffin, Justin, Travis, and Clint McElroy and its 2018 graphic novel series adaptation by Clint McElroy, Carey Pietsch, Travis McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, and illustrated by Carey Pietsch. This podcast and graphic novel adaptation offer queer representations through both roleplay from NPCs and PCs. In chapter two of this thesis, I analyse theatrical representations of D&D with a focus on Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play She Kills Monsters and DNDQ Live’s touring production of Dungeons and Drag Queens. 7 Performances such as these help to demonstrate how homebrews can provide strong means for players and communities to explore gender and sexual identity. As these examples suggest, while the game may not have been developed as a platform for exploring queer identities and narratives, its amenity to homebrew approaches has drawn many LGBTQ2SIA+ players. For many players, the game offers a valuable and relatively safe site in which to explore identities and activities without real world consequences. Players have the mobility to explore a fantasy setting with more freedom comparatively to reality. This might look like: a player flirting with the bar keep, standing up for an NPC in peril, or befriending a large bear through casting the spell animal friendship. In other words, players can pursue actions and relationships that might have fatal consequences in real life. Within the context of the game, however, players explore and accept the various outcomes (good, bad or otherwise) through their PC. This safety and the self-reflexivity provoked within the game aligns well with the needs of queer communities who must regularly navigate self-expression in oppressive real-life contexts. D&D, by contrast, encourages players and often has no formal constraints. Rather, its only limits are the players’ imaginations which can run free within the levels of consent established in a party. For example, in a queer community game, a rule for consent might be setting boundaries around role-playable scenarios; there might be detailed understanding of the kinds of permissible combat that explicitly bans sexual harassment, assault or other community sensitive content. Beyond such rules, however, personal preference is the primary driver of character creation (Smith 240). David Waldron argues that “at their most enthralling, RPGs require a multi-layered structure of close social interaction and a mechanism for exploring shared ideals, values, symbols and cultural forms (particularly those derived from literature)” (3). Queer players can use RPGs to 8 build consent-based communities in which they can be self-reflexive and imaginative as they explore their personal preferences through the characters they create. Accounting for the historical influence Dungeons and Dragons wields, the above outlines where the LGBTQ2SIA+ community has been situated in the game’s broader community and how it has been slowly growing in scale against a longer history of exclusion and erasure (Pinkston 131). It is also important now to consider the centrality of the player-created characters in the gameplay and how their identity and performance traits can influence game performance. For minority queer people and women, having control over a character’s traits and performance choices in the gaming environment might be considered a means to imagine more inclusive worlds. Indeed, performance studies scholar José Esteban Muñoz points to the power of such imaginings to create a sanctuary environment in which to generate visions of more inclusive worlds not yet available to the players elsewhere. In their 2009 book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, such sites offer blueprints for a better future. Below, I investigate how Muñoz and other performance, and game studies scholars can help us to recognize the value of D&D as a generative site for LGBTQ2SIA+ players to imagine and create better worlds. 1.4 CREATING CHARACTER: Self Reflexivity, Utopia, & Queerness In his 2014 chapter, “Critical hits & critical spaces: Roleplaying games and their potential in developing critical literacy and new literacy practices”, Kevin Smith argues that critical performance pedagogy, “privileges ‘the doing’ – the performativity of knowing and learning that is gained through performance” (243). Smith’s notion of “the doing” aligns with how players negotiate the world of a D&D campaign. Players learn in real time the boundaries of the world their PCs currently inhabit. They then translate this new knowledge through the actions of role 9 play and overall performance. Central to “the doing” or performance of a character are a player’s choices about vocalization and speech. Players build from shared understanding and experience with a given language. During the play, they can both imitate and innovate as they perform. They can emulate, parody, resist, expand, or otherwise unsettle those traits drawn from their lived experience and, in this way, they can go beyond their quotidian perspectives and personal circumstance (Smith 244). Moreover, Waldron argues, “the player is not so much role-playing as persona-playing… players can create sufficient psychological distance to believe they have transcended the constraining features of their own socio-cultural identity” (4). In this process of character creation, Waldron further points out that while an avatar has identity features of its own, the player character (PC), otherwise known as the player’s avatar, has the potentiality to serve as a metaphor for identity exploration beyond the game. Performance in these environments is layered and involves a range of choices concerning voice, speech, pace, gender and sexual identity, costume, gesture, masking, time and space. The actor/player occupies both a temporal state of fantasy (through the world of the game fiction) and within the reality of the material gameplay. The latter can be exemplified through live commentary, how they pre-plan mission specific strategies, and how they speak about their characters with others (be that in person or virtually). Moving between the fantastical world and the material gameplay, they reveal layered connections with their specific PC as well as the other players, and NPCs in the game. Some scholars have argued that character formation, performance and gameplay can have therapeutic effects. In their 2023 article, “Let your clients fight dragons: A rapid evidence assessment regarding the therapeutic utility of ‘Dungeons & Dragons”, Sören Henrich and Rachel Worthington surveyed current literature surrounding the psychological benefits of 10 Dungeons and Dragons. Particularly resonant with my research here is their discussion of ‘mirroring’- a physiological concept that references the way neurons are activated in humans by simply observing another engage in behaviour (Henrich & Worthington 387). In a roleplaying sense, there is an understanding of the potential for certain social behaviours to be developed through imaginative play in mirroring within a campaign setting. My own study, by contrast, emerges from theatre and performance studies to interrogate the practice of character creation and how the choices involved interweave with the production of a campaign. I will therefore not be assessing the health benefits of the game, or anything but the consciously expressed reflections of the game and the type of characters created by players—most notably, how players understand the identities of their game characters in relationship with their own identities outside the game. To Dan McAdams, “identity is a life story. A life story is a personal myth that an individual begins working on in late adolescence and young adulthood in order to provide his or her life with unity or purpose and in order to articulate a meaningful niche in the psychosocial world” (5). The focus of my thesis is on how characters and interviewees articulate ideas about gender performance within the context of and broadly in relation to the game. Identity is a broad, multidisciplinary concept. McAdams’ states, “personal myths involve an imaginative reconstruction of the past in light of an envisioned future” (53). We can parallel McAdams’ “envisioned future” to Muñoz’s queer utopian blueprints and Ruberg's ideas of queer world building. While some players might benefit from mirroring, others might be interested in imagining utopias that support their own identity. Muñoz’s ideas of utopia in his book Cruising Utopia: The then and there of Queer Futurity relate to Russian theatre practitioner’s Constantin Stanislavski’s “magic if”. In his foundational 1936 book, An Actor Prepares, Stanislavski 11 investigated the artistic power of ‘ifs’ and ‘magic ifs’ for actors as they prepared their character roles. Stanislavski wrote, “our work on a play begins with the use of if as a lever to lift us out of everyday life on to the plane of imagination” (59). To Stanislavski, the ‘magic if’ references a technique that asks actors to consider a character’s given circumstances, thus allowing them to access the character through questioning of what the character would do in such circumstances. Muñoz’s theorization of utopia and queer futurity in the form of blueprints also looks towards possibilities and imagining and invites questions about action under the imagined circumstances. Actors and players alike can similarly question, what would my character do in these imagined circumstances? Comparatively, in the bounds of D&D and TTRPGs, players can explore what their characters will do in real time and come up with their own given circumstances- their own “magic ifs”. An actor, however, relies on the play text to surface this information, as to Stanislavski, “the play, the parts in it, are the invention of the author’s imagination, a whole series of ifs and given circumstances thought up by him” (Stanislavski 59). To Muñoz “utopia is an ideal… it renders potential blueprints of a world not quite here, a horizon of possibility, not a fixed schema” (97). What is a blueprint if not an envisioning for future hope, a picture of someone’s “magic if”, a thought that longs to be seen. For Muñoz, ideas about utopia invite careful attention to dreaming as a critical methodology. In dialogue with German philosopher Ernst Bloch, Muñoz references the fairy tale or mythical landscape humans have often turned to in times of need for psychological rest (163). Finding sanctuary in such imaginary landscapes, he argues, is a natural response to the pressures of everyday performance. In extinguishing the need for locale, the boundless mythical landscape is a space where “magic ifs” can be fully explored. They are rehearsed in the mind’s eye and begin the process of developing a creative outlet for future hope. Thinking about Muñoz’s 12 arguments and Stanislavski’s ‘magic ifs’ has helped me to recognize how the theatrical, performative and imaginative elements of TTRPGs offer potent means for generating blueprints for future worlds. In this framing, the TTRPGs can help queer folks align with their dreams, ambitions, or hopes (as Muñoz has emphasized), and build themselves up beyond the limits and prejudices of prevailing heteronormative structures. I use the term queer as an umbrella to identify those in both the LGBTQ2SIA+ community and those that are non-heteronormative. Muñoz’s work challenges tropes that reduce queerness to a stage in one’s life to favour acknowledgement of the everyday performance of living and breathing queerness well beyond the confines of the here and now. Muñoz argues that utopia is “flux, a temporal disorganization, as a moment when the here and the now is transcended by a then and a there that could be and indeed should be” (97). His arguments resonate with the 2015 introduction, “Has the Queer Ever Been Human” by Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen. Luciano and Chen unravel ideas of humanhood and the notion of constructing what we expect. By purposefully unsettling normative presentation, the authors touch on the politics of refusal – in other words, denying or disrupting performance. Resisting established binaries (an example being, subject or object, male or female), Luciano and Chen approach ownership of oneself as a way of devising and actualizing utopian thought. Judith Butler, another foundational scholar who links utopia and queerness, famously argued for understanding gender as a series of performative acts. Gender is a “doing” tied to other such “doings” and shaped by levels of safety, accessibility, and personal affinity (Butler 34). Butler’s conceptualization of gender performativity refers to gender as a performance of repeated stylized acts (191) informed by cultural scripts that become sedimented and thus give the illusion of something natural or inherent. Acknowledging the role of repetition and 13 sedimentation, however, invites questioning of that which seems natural and fixed. TTRPG gameplay can offer shared spaces and times in which such questioning can happen in a communal way. They afford means for re-imagining, subversion and invention, not least in the imagined traits, costumes, gestures and actions of PCs. A site for fantasy, communal re-imagining and gameplay, TTRPGs can help to unsettle the kinds of heteronormative repetitions and sedimentations Butler theorizes: The body set limits to the imaginary meanings that it occasions but is never free of an imaginary construction. The fantasized body can never be understood in relation to the body as ‘real’; it can only be understood in relation to another culturally instituted fantasy, one which claims the place of the “literal” and the “real”. These limits to the real are produced within the naturalized heterosexualization of bodies in which physical facts serve as causes and desires reflect the inexorable effects of that physicality. (Butler 96) Game studies and other theorists have also demonstrated strong connections between communal fantasy, PC creation and queer (re)imagining. Although they focus on video games, I have found the work of video game theorist Bo Ruberg particularly instructive. In their most recent monograph, How to Queer the World: Radical Worldbuilding through Video Games, Ruberg theorizes a practice of queer worldbuilding, a practice that they emphasize, “is not the same thing as building worlds that feature queer stories or communities, though such worlds themselves have immense value. Instead, queer worldbuilding describes the practice of constructing new worlds through methods, frameworks, and tools that can themselves be understood as queer” (Ruberg 4). In this thesis, I am interested in a similar kind of queer worldbuilding practice, here involving TTRPGs. Yisong Han and Xavier Ho write, “the queer 14 potential of videogames doesn’t necessarily require pre-existing LGBTQ content to be activated by players” (18), the same sentiment can be directed towards other forms of gaming, such as RPGs. D&D was not made for queer people as an intended audience, but that does not mean a queer person (or anyone for that matter) could not map a queer identity onto their PC or engage in queer worldbuilding with their community of players. Performing gender and sexual identity in the context of TTRPGs and character creation offers a means for reclaiming agency. In activating an imaginary politics fueled by self-governing practices, a player’s individual relationship with performing gender as a player and as a PC combines with other players in ways that can constitute a form of queer world building. In many cultural contexts over time, gender markers assign humanhood and distinguish who does not fit the societal check-box norms. Bodies that do not conform to a single identity “constitute the domain of the dehumanized and the abject against which the human itself is constituted” (Butler 151). PCs offer important entry points into both Muñoz’s articulation of queer utopia, as well as the productive re-imagining Butler posits. In the context of RPGs like D&D, PCs allow players to act as if they are in the fictional world, replete with the character’s traits, props, costumes, and other performative elements. A PC can visit any realm that the player can conceptualize, they possess the ability to hop between an envisioned space of imagination and into reality whenever the player sees fit. The characterization process in RPGs starts with fantasy (Martin & Fine 118). While to some, the character customization is tedious, for others it opens a phantom door (Muñoz 112) into a plethora of possibilities. In this bridge one can connect their means of existence (especially core attributes related to gender and sexual identity), to how one might construct a PC to roleplay. 15 1.5 ROLE FOR PERFORMANCE: Theatricality in D&D Theatricality is embedded in D&D. My description below of D&D’s theatrical elements draws on the theoretical work I have read as an emerging theatre and performance studies scholar. Critically, however, I also draw on my own extensive experience playing the game. I have long been struck by how much theatrical language is embedded in how players discuss and describe their actions in Dungeons and Dragons. I have also noted how the form of roleplay embedded in D&D gameplay can facilitate identity exploration. Waldron defines gameplay as, “a form of interactive novel in which the protagonists create and control the actions of a cast of characters” (1). In D&D, the DM assumes the role of narrator and players are required to create a character through which they will play the game. Their PC negotiates the open world through the artform of shared storytelling with other players while the DM acts as a leader and referee, serving what Smith calls the other “members of the cast” (240). The decision to perform as their character and immerse oneself in the narrative fiction is also a decision to follow the direction of the DM. Complying with these rules is essential. Antonios Liapis and Alena Denisova define RPGs as “the imagined habitation of a mechanically structured, fictional world through embodiment in a single entity that is able to exert agency in accordance with the rules of that world” (4). The cast of PCs join the DM and venture forth into an as-yet-unknown story. Each PC’s performance relies on two key aspects: voice and dice. The voice embodies both the in-character state of the PC, as well as the player state. The in-character state references the thoughts and verbal narration of the scene at hand. In this state, playing the character often includes performing the fictional character with total vocal embodiment. By contrast, the player state incorporates the flux between being in-character and inquiring about the game with fellow 16 players or with the DM outside of characterization but still within the limits of the game’s session. These are moments of study and survey when the player’s/actor’s mind is still present in the gameplay, but they do not occupy their character at that moment. Narration is transmitted through oral and sometimes auditory cues. For example, when the game is conducted in person or online the DM will vocalize their narration, quite literally speaking on what is happening in the world of the game, voicing NPCs, and answering any player questions that might arise. Depending on accessibility or DM preferences, the DM might punctuate their narration with certain sound effects, such as dramatic action music during scenes of combat or literal sounds of battle like swords clashing (Borecky 48), chatter and hardcore music (a subgenre of music, that takes popular music- like Eminem’s “Real Slim Shady” and remixes them into a medieval-like sound), music in a tavern scene, extreme cases of weather like thunder and rain, or magically inspired sounds relating to spell casting, etc... Some DMs may choose to create the sounds themselves using their body and voice, others might use technology to enhance or invoke performance. Other technologies might be more visual and tactile in nature, for example, costumes which can serve to further immerse the player in an embodied PC identity. Lastly, as mentioned above, the dice decide the fate of how well a skill is completed. This is also a performative act as the physicality and repetition of rolling the dice, sometimes in ways connected to character traits or ritualistic behaviours, impacts the narrative resolution. Depending on how it is incorporated into the game, dice could be considered a theatrical prop. For instance, in a live session, physical dice are typically brought as they serve a central function in the gameplay. Some players even go as far as selecting, purchasing, or personifying their dice. An example of this arises if a player rolls a lot of fails and sentences their dice to temporary “dice jail” on account of “misbehaving”. In this case they then use another, fresher set of dice. 17 Further, some players make dice that resemble their current character and develop rolling rituals particular to that character, akin to how some might blow on dice for luck at a casino. For some, dice are an integral part of how they might access their character, some even are made specifically for a certain character classes. Dice come in many designs that have the opportunity to share personality. Someone who collects dice is often referred to as a “dice goblin” by the community. There are also accessories that players can purchase or make such as the dice jail as mentioned above, or dice towers that prolong the dice roll making the process of rolling more dramatic and themed. In online play, while technically you can still involve physical dice and play on the honour system (or have a camera that you can position to see the roll), most folks, for accountability and overall ease, rely on bots to do the rolling on a website such as Roll20 or on a Discord server. Online, then, there is less tangibility to the action, as the player types or pastes a code into the site (on Roll20 for instance the code is: /roll 1d20). The DM, on the other hand, assumes various roles. Most notably, they maintain the authority within any given game they referee. Collaboration is an integral part of the game and in some circumstances may give the players opportunity to challenge the DM. However, most of the time, the DM holds the final authority over the narrative. Their power shapes the game in its totality through the overall themes they introduce, how the narrative progresses, and how they co-perform alongside PCs to deliver outcomes of player actions (Liapis & Denisova 5). While the DM decides the direction of each individual story, some common themes explored in game might include adventures (such as: open world exploration, lore earned by combat or mission completion), mystery (revealing hidden plots like conspiracies), horror (navigating gruesome dungeons, or playing through body horror as a result of combat), politics (every area encountered will open a new set of laws and governance players must navigate). DMs will usually use a 18 screen (called a Dungeon Master's Screen) to cover their session notes and textbooks to prevent any narrative spoilers. DMs may also choose to incorporate maps and miniature figures that act as interactive set pieces the players can engage with during play. Often before a campaign can even begin, players will have done some character work, referring to, consulting with their DM, filling out their character sheet, and understanding how they will portray said character. Another aspect to note is that the performance site may change depending on the party’s needs. The environment in which one plays a TTRPG impacts performance. For example, in the context of a TTRPG the play could be in person or online. An in-person gathering may be represented by players huddled around a table with dice and character sheet in hand. In an in-person game, props and tools, such as minis, drawings, and maps from the DM or other materials like diagrams help with visualization and physicalizing the role-play (Daniau 431). By contrast, a virtual session relies on a technology-dependent environment where communication between players filters through cameras, screens, microphones and speakers. In Mariah Kemp’s 2023 dissertation “Cultivating community and belonging: Queer rhetorical practices in virtual Dungeons & Dragons games”, the author found, after interviewing seventeen queer D&D players who communed playing in virtual space, that “virtuality allowed for more options to ‘be’ both the player’s idealized self and the character without appearance getting in the way, such as through turning cameras off, using avatars, and using voice modifiers” (64). Further, the online environment and its artwork, sounds, and communication practices are rooted in the digital programming possibilities and limits of specific gaming platforms and websites such as Roll20 or Discord. Thus, whether live or virtual, how the DM chooses to conduct their game has the potential to alter the game experience for players significantly. In turn, these choices then, can support or challenge how queer players perform and explore identity in gameplay. 19 1.6 BACKSTORY: Researcher Positionality Recently positionality in qualitative research has become a measurement of rigour (Sibbald et al. 1). Sharing researcher positionality has benefits such as understanding how a researcher comes to their topic and acknowledging that often researchers “are drawn to this work because of our positionalities and our social locations” (Sibbald et al. 4). It is important to note, however, that researchers operate in different social, geo-political and material contexts and may have access to different scales of protection and resources. These contexts and resources can make disclosing positionality more or less dangerous. In their 2025 article, “Positioning Positionality and Reflecting on Reflexivity: Moving from Performance to Practice” Kaitlin R. Sibbald et al. consider positionality alongside researcher reflexivity in qualitative research. Collectively, they write, How much of that [positionality] does a researcher need to disclose for reflexive purposes? If membership in a particular group is assumed to equate to personal authority over a truth claim, that would counter paradigmatic positions endorsing the recognition of multiple truths, realities, and ways of knowing. In addition, how a “group” is defined may convey more about assumptions about that group than their experience… Often, paradoxically, reflexive work involves detangling inaccurate stereotypical and homogenized assumptions, whereas positionality statements without reflexivity and contextual nuance reify them (Sibbald et al. 4). Sibbald et al. consider the harmful nature of stereotypes and assumptions embedded in research practices, and while disclosing positionality and being a member of the intended 20 research community may help alleviate those assumptions, it also requires that a researcher publicly out themselves. Mark Fathi Massoud writes, “when an author consciously blurs the boundaries between the personal and the professional by inserting their experiences into their scholarly work, they open up themselves – not only their ideas – to criticism and harm” (66). To this, Sibbald et al. emphasize further that, “stigma does not vanish at the gates of academia, and disclosures have the potential to impact not only a researcher but also their family and others with whom they associate. It should not go unnoticed that disclosures carry social risk and demand hidden labor” (Sibbald et al. 5). Accounting for the hidden labours, ultimately, the effort of disclosing positionality tells the researcher’s audience why the researcher was interested in the topic, how they went about collecting their data and scholarship, and why their participants agreed to take part in their study (Massoud 67). My intention behind disclosing my identity takes inspiration from Massoud’s “empowering communities” (70). Massoud explains that some researchers write and conduct their research to connect with the communities they are a part of to help make sense of their own experiences or collective experiences the community has had. With that said, it is important to keep in mind, “attention to intersecting identities reminds us that privilege in one aspect of a researcher’s social location may mediate the stigma they risk in another” (Sibbald et al. 5). While I belong to the queer community, I additionally hold a lot of privilege that other members do not. I am white, currently able-bodied, and am attending a post-secondary institution without it imposing a great financial risk to my family. Further, I was born and raised in Canada where I can live freely without current threat of political repercussions for being queer. So, from this vantage point and following theatrical tradition, I will now paint a scene: 21 Setting: Pachatol, a small magically created island inside an atoll—a place of abundance, liveliness, and intrigue. Our story is set right after the horrific events of the Great Octopus War that caused mayhem and catastrophic violence that had lasted a century on the island. In this timeline, we are in an era of optimistic rebuilding with a dark underbelly waiting to strike. While peace is strived for on the island nation, five gangs run (including ours, Tempest) in hopes to snatch authority. Motive: In navigating a crime ridden landscape, Tempest must bring peace and restoration to the beautiful island of Pachatol. Now, lastly, I have the great pleasure of introducing you to a ferocious, rambunctious, rocker dyke, Lady Snakesqueer (LSQ for short), a playable character that I created with whom I experienced my first RPG: Lady Snakesqueer loves all things performance and tries to integrate it into any part of her life. Growing up was hard being a little gay. She was abandoned by her family leaving her to the streets. A lesbian music troupe that wrote folk songs picked her up and taught her the way of the stage and hating the patriarchy! Along the way, she came across Rapscaleon, a small raccoon, and they adventured happily ever after! Oh, and in her spare time, Lady Snakesqueer enjoys hunting powerful men for sport. Now in the interest of time, that is not the entirety of LSQ’s background– for that, you would need to roll a history check. A common jest within the D&D community is the realization that your characters are self-inserts, most notably your first character (Kemp 1). But, it is enough 22 to prove that she fits within a stereotype in the queer D&D community: gay, broken, an outcast but now supported by a found community. I am deeply embedded in the Queer D&D community as a player, a co-performer, a storyteller and sometimes a Game Master/ Dungeon Master. Playing LSQ in the above scenario was healing. I had an opportunity to portray the confidence I wanted outside the game space in the game first and, in doing so, explore the character traits I had always desired. Having this epiphany encouraged me to begin paying attention to the actions beyond just my own PC and the narrative laid out in front of me. I would look at my fellow players and see the characters they brought to the campaign under a finer lens. Suddenly, it felt as if I was understanding and learning more about the people I cared for most in a new format. It was invigorating. I witnessed in real time friends whom I have known since early childhood challenge their gender identity through their PC and slowly begin to introduce those explorations into their personal life, such as changing their name and their preferred pronouns. These past experiences and my positionality bring with them both strengths and biases. For instance, as a theatre and performance studies scholar, I have had training in textual analysis and performance analysis that allows me to consider how elements of composition and literary devices shape the performances I discuss in this thesis. Similarly, my insider position as a D&D player and as a member of the queer community bring with them biases and assumptions that might mean I overlook certain perspectives different from my own. To account for this, throughout the process of my research I have practiced ongoing reflexivity to ensure my observations and interpretations were grounded in evidence from the performance texts and productions I interacted with and the interviews I conducted. This came in the format of 23 journaling, keeping memos, creating diagrams and regular check-ins and reflexive review with my supervisors. 1.7 RESEARCH QUESTION, METHODOLOGY & RESEARCH: PROJECT OVERVIEW My primary research question is: given its inherent theatricality and performativity, what opportunities does D&D offer for the exploration of young adults’ gender, sexual, and queer identity, both in terms of the game play itself and its representation on stage? To pursue this question, I looked first at contemporary plays and performances that were likewise interested in the creative possibilities of D&D gameplay and performance for young performers. In chapter two I analyse Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters; as well as DNDQ Live’s touring (2021-present) production of Dungeons and Drag Queens. Each emphasizes D&D play in which themes of gender and sexual identity are central. I use the methods of close reading of play texts and performance analysis to explore gender and sexual identity, arguing that both productions demonstrate how queer players can use game customization options and homebrew to explore their identities. In this chapter I analyse D&D play and performance to understand how each showed players engaged in queer worldbuilding and performing characters in ways that helped them to explore gender and sexual identity within the game. Analysing Nguyen’s play and attending two Dungeons and Drag Queens performances in Vancouver helped me to look beyond my own gaming experience. I engaged with contemporary theatre and performance artists who also investigate how queer players understand and experience the relationship between their character creations and theatrical choices during D&D gameplay, as well as their gender and sexual identity outside the game. 24 The core research question cited above also drives my analysis in chapter 3. Here I share and analyse the results of interviews I conducted for this thesis project with the support and approval of UBC’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board. Using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis as my method of analysis (5-24) I interviewed six participants via Zoom who met the following criteria: they are between the ages of 18-30 (classified as young adults), they identify on the queer spectrum, and they have experience playing Dungeons & Dragons. I hypothesized that through conversation-based interviewing, participants’ self-reporting about their roleplaying histories would demonstrate that they have imbricated aspects of their own queer identity in their constructed characters. Familiarizing myself with the scholarly and popular literature around D&D and my own experiences as a player has helped me to identify the power of RPGs as a mode of self-reflexivity and community building. The game affords players opportunities to explore gender identity, play on gender norms, expression, relations, and power. Through this thesis I aim to understand the role gender, sexual identity and theatricality play in the character formation processes of contemporary LGBTQ2SIA+ young adult communities, TTRPGs. 25 Chapter 2: She Kills Monsters / Dungeons and Drag Queens To address my primary research question, it is important to understand the broader history and context of the Dungeons and Dragons as well as contemporary queer engagement with the game. In the last chapter I traced the broad history of Dungeons and Dragons. I suggested the context for queer uptake of the game and how José Esteban Muñoz’s understanding of utopia and blueprints speaks particularly to queer experiences of play. Contemporary theatre and performance practices are also instructive. In this chapter I consider how the characters in Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters and DNDQ Live’s production of Dungeons and Drag Queens show how young queer players can use in-game customization methodologies such as homebrew to explore identity and perhaps find a sense of queer community. Dungeons and Dragons has been referenced and represented in a variety of media. In 1982, for example, teens in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial play the game. The 1999 cult television series Freaks and Geeks also features D&D gameplay. More recently, the television series Stranger Things (2016- present) and Gravity Falls (2012-2016) also show preteens playing versions of the game (in the case of Gravity Falls, they play a parody called, as the Season 2, Episode 13 title suggests, Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons). The 2023 film, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) follows a group made up of a bard, barbarian, paladin, sorcerer, and druid that come together to commit a heist, navigating the interpersonal relationships between the party members and their efforts to achieve their goals. An advertisement for the film jokingly showed the now-aged characters from Freaks and Geeks still caught up in a game that had lasted 23 years. Most media portrayals of D&D are often presented with a group of “nerds” huddled around a kitchen table, or in a basement. Often the DM will be positioned as the epicentre and everything and everyone else falls around them. Not only has 26 D&D become a cultural touchstone in film and television, but it has also been a central theme in several contemporary theatre performances. In D&D inspired theatrical performances/ productions, the set and staging will typically place the DM separately from the rest of the players as the iconic circle formation of the actual game does not account for audience sightlines. The DM will most likely be positioned center stage and their players will be either to one side, or fill space on either side of the DM. In this chapter, I focus on two such examples which have been produced on many stages across the continent and in Vancouver. The first is Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters, and the second, DNDQ Live’s touring (2021-present) production of Dungeons and Drag Queens. Although they do so in different ways, both She Kills Monsters and Dungeons and Drag Queens represent how queer players use in-game customization options and homebrew to explore identity, namely, gender and sexual identity. Moreover, they illuminate core themes that will surface across my interviews with actual D&D players in chapter three. Homebrews are central to both of She Kills Monsters and Dungeons and Drag Queens. As I noted in the introduction, homebrew refers to imaginary inputs from players or their DM that are not currently established in the game’s canon; they are often influenced from pop culture, or developed from the imagination of the player/ DM. I argue that in these plays the concept of homebrew is used to construct valuable, imaginative community spaces in which LGBTQ2SIA+ players can explore aspects of their identity and desire within the context of the game. I further argue that the performances stage a found family of co-players that offer their central characters a sanctuary space in which their queerness is fully accepted. Across both performances, theatrical elements such as costumes, vocal performances, and the use of stage properties (props), are used to build characters and stage the use of homebrew in this way. 27 2.1 SHE KILLS MONSTERS Set in Athens, Ohio in 1995, She Kills Monsters centres around a 25 year old, Agnes, who wrestles with the complex process of grief after losing both her parents and her then fifteen-year-old younger sister, Tilly, in a horrific car accident two years prior to the start of the play. While cleaning out her sister’s room, Agnes stumbles upon a notebook with a homebrewed Dungeons and Dragons module. In Agnes’ daily life, she is a schoolteacher who works at the high school which she attended in her youth, as did Tilly until the time of her death. The discovery of the notebook (akin to a diary) prompts Agnes to try and understand Tilly better, something she feels she did not do properly when Tilly was alive. By reading Tilly’s homebrewed D&D campaign details, Agnes confronts the guilt she feels both in losing her sister and in failing to understand her. After finding the module, Agnes takes it upon herself to learn the game of Dungeons and Dragons and plays through Tilly’s adventure. Throughout the play, Agnes relies on Chuck, an employee at an RPG gaming store and former friend of Tilly, to facilitate her gameplay as a Dungeon Master who is guided by Tilly’s notebook containing the D&D module she wrote. She learns that the module features characters that resemble Tilly’s real friends. Tilly’s original location of New Landia— which takes place in the Dungeons and Dragons pre-designed realms, was a space for Tilly to process her feelings of familial isolation, repression, her sexual identity and love she felt for her friend Lilly/Lilith. It was also a space in which she could grapple with homophobic school bullies (Evil Tina and Gabbi) via the PC she created for herself, Tillius the Paladin. The play’s major themes are the exploration and expression of minoritarian gender and sexual identity, adolescent anxiety, school-bullying, survivor grief, and premature death. Through the context of its fictional Dungeons and Dragons homebrewed narrative, the 28 playwright Qui Nguyen tackles the complexities and costs of ‘coming out’ (or not) in adolescence. In his article, “Character-World Dialectics on the Contemporary American Stage: Gaming, Role-Playing, and Wrestling with Idioculture” Warren Kluber notes that “theatre affords us a privileged vantage point to bear witness to the co- construction and ongoing revision of characters and worlds” (227). Analysing three American plays, Neighborhood 3, She Kills Monsters, and Chad Deity, Kluber points to the notion that game-based performance gives the player embodying a certain role license to “clarify things about themselves that are opaque and inaccessible in real life—both to others and themselves” (219). This is exemplified by both Tilly and Agnes Evans in She Kills Monsters. On the topic of queerness specifically, Kluber explains that, The sexuality of Tilly’s character can only manifest in a world that supports it; gayness is made a quality of her world before it becomes a quality of her character. World enables and inhibits character, informing the shape it can take, but so also does character radiate out into world to expand its boundaries and alter its structure in a feedback loop with no clear starting point (Kluber 226). Tilly’s queerness in game is an indication of her queerness outside the game— because this module was tucked away in her notebook, it was a private space of processing and fantasy. Tilly was able to live in a world of liminality where lesbianism and being queer all together were more than tolerated, they were embraced. As referenced in my introduction, José Esteban Muñoz’s 2009 book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity and his definition of utopia helps to understand the symbolism of Tilly’s Dungeons and Dragons module. To 29 revisit the terminology from my previous chapter, ‘homebrew’ in this context means to alter or bend Wizards of the Coast’s published Dungeons and Dragons rules. As a practice, homebrew allows players to map other qualities they wish to explore that are not already accounted for in the standard game. Tilly projects her fantasy into her module. This forged a space that she dreamt of physicalizing and would go to in moments of hardship. Tilly used this module to share the version of herself she saw, the version she wanted the world to see - unapologetically queer, powerful, and heroic. When audiences meet Tilly for the first time, she’s, ...(decked out in full leathery D&D fantasy armour with a cool-ass sword in hand. She is surrounded by a horde of Kobalds [goblin-like creatures].) (Suddenly they attack!) (Tilly quickly slays each of the monsters with grace and efficiency.) (She stands poised over their dead bodies)… (Nguyen 7) In dawning a “cool-ass sword” (Nguyen 7) and costuming herself in D&D fantasy armour Tilly sees herself as “cool” and heroic. This is further amplified in scene three Tilly introduces this perceived version of herself, “it is I, the great paladin Tillius, healer of the wounded, defender of lights” (Nguyen 21). In scene two, when Agnes begins to develop her own character and considers which weapon to wield, she learns that Tilly, as Tillius the Paladin, earned her blade, “the Eastern Blade of the Dreamwalker” (Nguyen 20) that was “forged from the fiery nightmares of the Gods” and “blessed by the demons of Bricken” (Nguyen 20). Tilly’s sword was bestowed to her after banishing the Tiamat from New Landia. Tiamat is a lawful-evil dragon within the D&D canon, and is known for being hateful and greedy, with five heads where 30 each resembles the different elemental powers of the chromatic dragons—earth, wind, lightening, fire, and water. Tillius’ actions in New Landia demonstrate her desire for doing good and being seen as good. Tilly’s expressions of queerness held within a game landscape offer a fruitful connection to Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. In distinguishing her hope for queer liberation, a space built by her design fuelled by her desires to love and be loved by Lilly, Tilly creates an interact-able space to explore her sexual identity freely. In the campaign she creates, not only does she freely express her sexual identity, but she grapples with outside factors that prevent her from being allowed to embrace her identity. This is translated to audiences through the homophobic remarks and actions inflicted by Evil Tina and Evil Gabbi. For example, in scene eight the bullying Tilly likely endured at school was acted out by the succubi in New Landia, they trick Tilly by Evil Gabbi saying, “Okay, all you have to do to get into the awesome evil club is to make out with me for one whole minute” (Nguyen 44). When Tilly leans in with her eyes closed to kiss Evil Gabbi, Evil Tina turns around and kicks her in the face before exclaiming, “knew you were gay!” (Nguyen 45), with back up from Evil Gabbi saying, “Hahaha. Dyke, you're so in love with me” (Nguyen 45). In such moments, playwright Nguyen makes plain the connections between Tilly’s fantasy world to Tilly’s real life. The characters, even her in-lore girlfriend, are real people that Tilly had interacted with in her lifetime. The homophobic succubi are her actual high school bullies which Nguyen reinforces by double-casting these roles with the same actors. Tilly is arguably reinforcing what she already knows about reality but uses fantasy within the D&D game world to manipulate circumstances to relive and problem-solve what is happening in her life. In other words, Tilly faced bullying and 31 homophobia by Tina and Gabbi in her daily life and Tilly re-imagines and navigates the conflict in her fictional world of New Landia. Emry Sottile’s 2024 article, “It Might Have a Little to Do with Wish Fulfillment”: The Life-Giving Force of Queer Performance in TTRPG Spaces”, connects Nguyen’s play to queer utopia (67) while additionally accounting for Jonaya Kemper’s idea of “emancipatory bleed” (1)- where players assume their PC’s traits and vice versa. Sottile argues that Nguyen’s play is an example of queer utopia because New Landia is simply a space of wish fulfilment. Tilly additionally embraces Kemper’s bleed, as even in the space that one might perceive as her safe haven, aspects of Tilly’s actuality bleed into the module. This is evinced by Evil Tina and Gabi’s presence, as wells as Lilly’s/ Lilith. Tilly’s module takes inspiration from her real life and in doing so, she bleeds into her game. All are people in Tilly’s real life who she has constructed as having similar but exaggerated character traits within the game. This benefits Agnes, as she now gets an account of what her sister’s life must have been like when she was alive. Tilly, in her real life, is considered an outcast from her peers as shown from her experiences with Evil Gabbi and Tina who alienate her due to her queerness. Not only does she actively engage in geekdom through her love of TTRPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons that offers her an escape to New Landia, but she is gay and those who continue to keep her on the outskirts from their normative peers know and exploit that when possible. In their 2021 dissertation, Infinite Identities: Staging Fandom and Diversity in Geek Theatre, Scout Storey links Qui Nguyen’s 2011 play, She Kills Monsters and José Esteban Muñoz’s 2009 book Cruising Utopia: The then and there of Queer Futurity to geek theatre referring to projects that include core materials “of an established geek fandom or genre and, second, that it is produced by members of geek fan culture, targeting a geek audience” (3). To Storey, “geek and queer are 32 both derogatory labels that have been reclaimed as badges of pride” (46). Nguyen opens She Kills Monsters with language that insinuates not just a divide between ‘nerds’ and ‘non-nerds’, but a further distinction rooted in gender: NARRATOR. And here in the land of Ohio during the year of 1995, one of the rarest types of geeks walked the earth. A Dungeon Master without fear, prejudice, or a penis. This nerd was a girl-nerd, the most uncommon form of nerd in the world and her name was Tilly Evans (Nguyen 7). As demonstrated in the quote above, this is the first solidification of any confirmed attributes of Tilly’s identity: she is a girl, a nerd and a rarity. Tilly does not conform to social expectations for a girl in her place and time. As many scenes in the play unfold during what would have been Tilly’s formative years, Nguyen emphasizes how her identity does not map easily onto the version of girlhood expected by the dominant culture of her time and space. Tilly escapes to New Landia—a space where she can explore constructs like her sexual identity with no real-world consequences, yet the world’s pre-existing stigmas embodied by Evil Tina and Gabbi still leak into Tilly’s fantasy world. Nguyen also shows how she is a closeted (at least to her family) queer nerd. Throughout the play there is a running gag as Agnes follows Tilly’s writing and continually disapproves of how Tilly underdressed her female companions. To Agnes, it made no sense for these companions to pursue battle or adventure in the revealing clothing that Tilly wrote for Kaliope and Lilith: AGNES. My party is a leather-clad dominatrix and an Elvin super-model? CHUCK. Dude, don't look at me, this is what your sister wrote. AGNES. Then how come it screams "adolescent boy"? Seriously, "Violence makes me hot." Who says that? CHUCK. Okay, so there's definitely a certain amount of improv involved, but I swear this is the gist of what Tilly created. AGNES. This? CHUCK. Yes. This. (Nguyen 17-18) 33 Tilly created a space where she could admire women. While portrayed by Chuck during the game with Agnes, it seems like these costume choices were only about objectifying women. Agnes perceives that he is making a conscious effort to fetishize the women in his and Tilly’s life. Agnes cannot wrap her head around the fact that this was how Tilly chose to write her party, so initially she blames Chuck for over sexualizing the character descriptions. The reality of this scene illustrates two main ideas: one, that as Agnes’ Dungeon Master, Chuck’s improvisational offers dramatize and expand on the female character’s portrayal (including their sexual attributes), and two, that Tilly’s character creations suggested a similar character canon. Agnes’s reaction to the content is not out of the norm, from her perspective, they are not peers, they are all minors. Chuck’s emphasis on the party’s revealing clothing and nods to sexual attraction, are inappropriate and uncomfortable for an adult woman to acknowledge in a youth’s campaign module. While Tilly’s character choices in the module expressed her likeness to women through the descriptions, they also were akin to how a straight teenage boy might heighten female anatomy due to navigating sexual arousal, for example, AGNES. Wow, Elf, you're really bad at giving advice. KALIOPE. I apologize. Would you like to copulate with me now? AGNES. What? KALIOPE. I think it would make you feel better. I hear you humans like to do such things. AGNES. CHUCK I'm not going to have sex with the Elf- girl! CHUCK. What? I don't want to see you have sex with the sexy Elf-girl? Why would I want to see that? Ew, gross, hot-girl on hot-girl action. Your sister must have wrote that out. I mean, that's so gay and I'm so...straight AGNES. Are you done? (AGNES turns back to KALIOPE who leans in for a kiss.) Whoa, what are you doing? KALIOPE & CHUCK. (whispers) Nothing! (Nguyen 54-55) 34 Beyond the verbalizing of sexual attraction, Tilly acts on her sexual identity embodying queerness on stage. In scene eight, Agnes walks into an intimate moment shared between Tilly and Lilith kissing. Through this, she discovers her sister’s feelings towards her friend (Lilly in real life) were more than platonic, (AGNES enters back into the D&D world.) AGNES. Tilly! Tilly where are you? Check it out, I got myself some cool… (As she looks around, she catches TILLY and LILITH in what looks like some sort of scuffle. The two girls are pushing and grappling with each other. It looks pretty physical.) (Seeing this, AGNES pulls out her blade and starts approaching.) (But before she reaches them, LILITH grabs TILLY by the head and starts aggressively… making out with her.) AGNES. Whoa, what the hell??? TILLY. Oh, hey there, Agnes. Nice gloves. AGNES. What were you two doing? TILLY. I was, uh… kissing my girlfriend. AGNES. Whoa! Just wait a minute! You two are a couple? LILITH. Does this upset you, lunch meat? AGNES. It upsets me that you don’t know how to put on all your clothes. LILITH. I’d advise not talking to me in such a tone. AGNES. And I’d advise wearing a complete shirt next time you’re MAKING OUT WITH MY SISTER! Oh, wait just a minute, I get it. You two are dating because “Tilllius” is a guy character. TILLY. Tilllius isn’t a guy character. AGNES. Tilllius is a guy’s name. TILLY. No. Tilllius is a D&D name. I’m female, she’s female, and we’re lovers. AGNES. So your character’s gay? LILITH. As am I. (Nguyen 40) Given this information, Agnes assumes that in real life the pair were secretly dating, however, this was not the case. Nguyen shows the audience the aspirations Tilly had to pursue a romantic relationship with Lilly/ Lilith in real life. While nearing the end of the show Lilly (though in this scene, Agnus initially recognized her as Lilith) admits having feelings for Tilly (as they were each other’s first kiss) however, she was dating a popular male football player, turning down the thought or implication that she was romantically involved with Tilly, stating, 35 “Look Miss Evans, I didn’t date Tilly! I like boys, I swear” (Nguyen 47). This is before Agnes’s friend and colleague Vera informs her, Lilly “is a seventeen-year-old girl who’s been dating a member of that Athens High Football team for over a year. If she’s in the closet, she’s in there deep (Nguyen 48).” While Lilith/ Lilly’s sexual identity is never fully discussed or defined by the actual character it is heavily implied that she is at minimum bisexual, as during the ending Narrator address, the text refers to her as, “Lilly the Closeted” (Nguyen 83). Throughout her module, Tilly nurtured the idea of being loved by Lilly. Subtly, Nguyen sprinkled in little moments between the two prior to Agnes’s revelation, such as, moments where Lilith addressed Tilly as ‘love’ (28), or the pair holding hands as a gesture of comfort or solidarity (32). Tilly’s developed and original world of New Landia, gave Tilly a space to navigate the moments of homophobia and fear she felt in the real world and exist loving someone and those feelings be reciprocated. Homebrew allowed Tilly to write the relationship she wanted with Lilith and through her module she could play out her fantasy as if it came into fruition. In the play’s non-game world, many factors separated Tilly and Lilly from pursuing a romantic relationship. In scene five, there is an interaction between another companion, Orcus, where he identifies another potential threat that could keep Tilly and Lilith apart that goes as follows, (ORCUS looks LILITH up and down.) ORCUS. Whoa, wait just a minute. Don’t I know you? (This stops LILITH dead in her tracks.) LILITH. Um… what? No, you must be mistaking me for someone else. ORCUS. No. I know who you are. You and me, we hang in the same evil underworld. And I don’t think your daddy’s gonna be too happy you’re making time with a Paladin and a human. AGNES. Who’s her dad? KALIOPE. The devil. AGNES. That explains a lot. (LILITH’s demeanour suddenly shifts from total badass to shrinking violet.) 36 LILITH. Look, please don’t tell him, okay? He’ll kill me! AGNES. Wow, suddenly you don’t seem so tough. (LILITH backhands AGNES sending her flying across the stage.) ORCUS. Don’t worry. He doesn’t have any love for me either. Your secret’s safe with me. (Nguyen 30) Audiences know from scenes eight and nine, that like Tilly, Lilly struggles with her sexual identity. Through the above dialogue, audiences can infer that this internalization might be due to Lilly contending with a homophobic father/family. Scene eight where Evil Gabbi and Evil Tina bully Tilly and castigate her as a “dyke,” is similarly striking within the overall play for its comparatively short and concise dialogue. Its speed and focus underline how Evil Gabbi and Tina cruelly and efficiently strike Tilly with a verbal blow and then leave. While we never see their interactions outside the gameplay, Nguyen inserts the idea that Tilly had a reputation amongst the jock crowd for being gay, which could have made its way to Lilly’s dad through her football player boyfriend. Tilly identifies Lilly’s father to be actually “the devil” (Nguyen 30), as revealed by Kaliope. Lilith is scared, she no longer holds her tough demeanor, all in all, this can be considered an allegory for coming out. Through Tilly, we are able to recognize that Lilly is unable to be what Tilly deems as her “authentic self”—being proudly ‘out’ (i.e. the process queer people go through in openly discussing their identity like gender and sexual identity). Through Tilly’s viewing of Lilly’s relationship with her father, she understands him to be an obstacle to Lilly’s happiness. This is further exemplified through Lilith’s reaction to the threat of her father finding out her associations with Tillius the Paladin. There is an apparent divide between Lilly and Tilly, it is a relationship that Lilly’s father would not approve of. Moreso, likening her father to ‘the devil’ conjures up religious views of queerness that are not generally accepted or celebrated. To explain further, Nguyen’s reference to the devil parallels religious ideologies that 37 categorize the devil as prohibited and immoral. This speaks to the narrative often painted by right-wing Christians that queerness is immoral and should not be normalized, resulting in the discrimination, sanctioning and subjugation of LGBTQ2SIA+ people. Returning to the play, this moment reveals in many ways that Lilly is suppressed. Tilly views Lilly’s dad to be a barrier to their relationship and therefore, translates that grief into her world, where ironically, he still wields influence over his daughter. So in return, Tilly can make everyone else in New Landia gay thus illustrating the growing acceptance of queerness in Tilly’s homebrew world being an imaginative space in which Tilly, a queer D&D player can explore aspects of their identity and sapphic desires, AGNES. I mean why is everyone here gay? KALIOPE. Because it was the will of the creator. AGNES. The will of the creator? TILLY. Does that bother you, Agnes? AGNES. Tilly, why’d you make everyone gay? TILLY. Um, I don’t know. If I were to take an educated guess, I’d venture to guess that maybe the author of this world was into wearing tank tops and The Indigo Girls. (Nguyen 41) Tilly cannot change the fact that the one person she loves will not come out publicly. So in opposition to the devil status Lilith’s/Lilly’s father assumes, Tilly is the creator, as Kaliope states, “it was the will of the creator” (Nguyen 41), akin to a God-like figure. Another subtle allegory for coming out is how Chuck announces Tilly’s module in scene two by saying, “Welcome to the Quest of the Lost Soul of Athens. Your mission is find and free the Lost Soul before it is devoured by the dark forces of darkness forever” (Nguyen 18). In naming the quest and associating Tilly as a “lost soul” additionally Nguyen paints further religious iconography. Those deemed as “lost souls” are consider ones who have strayed from the Christian God, and queerness being considered perverted is viewed as a sin to some. Tilly’s soul is lost not just due 38 to her queerness, but more so, because Agnes never got to know Tilly, Agnes does not know what Tilly’s essence is. At the end of the scene, we learn that Orcus traded Tilly’s soul for a TV/VCR to the Tiamat (Nguyen 22). In a moment of reflection, Agnes, sees through Tilly’s writing and reveals her sister’s pain and sapphic longing. Agnes asks why Tilly and her friends play Dungeons and Dragons to which Tilly responds, TILLY. We play it because it’s awesome. It’s about having adventures and saving the world and having magic. And maybe - I guess - in some small, teeny capacity, it might have a little to do with wish fulfillment. Kelly gets to walk without crutches, Ronnie gets to be super strong… AGNES. What about you? TILLY. Me? I get the girl. (Nguyen 76) In this moment, Tilly nods to the game being a way to explore extensions of herself and her friends. Tilly suggests it allows them a space in which their wishes come true. Kaliope played by Kelly gets to roleplay walking without the use of crutches1, Ronnie can develop super strength through his character Orcus. Tilly understood that at the time of writing her module the likelihood that she would get to experience a sapphic romance was unlikely. In New Landia, Tillius the Paladin need not worry about outside acceptance. The structure of Nguyen’s play allows audiences to see layers of fantastical interaction. Agnes can speak with her lost sister, and the gameplay fiction suggests the actions and attitudes that were shaping Tilly’s daily life. Audiences of the play get to know Tilly through Agnes’s 1 Nguyen implicates that beyond the game, Kelly is nothing more than her disability, whereas Kelly’s D&D character Kaliope, gets to run free on account of her ability to walk in game—insinuating that Kelly as a disabled character wishes for nothing more than to be able bodied. This particular narrative framing is problematic. So, while the play is resisting stereotypes of queerness and opening up new possibilities, this aspect of the narrative is reiterating negative narratives about disability. 39 engagement with Tilly’s D&D worldbuilding. In the final scene, Ngyuen shares how Tilly hoped Agnes would see her, TILLY. Did you have fun? That’s the point in all this. Did you have fun? (AGNES, not knowing how to respond, simply nods her head.) TILLY. Good. (TILLY begins to exit.) AGNES. Wait. You’re not real. You’re gone. TILLY. But this story remains. And isn’t that essentially all that life is— a collection of stories? This is one of mine… KALIOPE. …and not just some story that I experienced like a party or a dance or an event, but something I dreamt- LILITH. Something far more personal and important than happenstance. This story came from my soul and by breathing life into it, who knows? ORCUS. Maybe a bit of my soul gets the chance to breathe for a moment once again. CHUCK. (Reading from the module.) I love you, my sister. TILLY. I’m sorry I can’t be there. CHUCK. (Reading from the module.) I have no idea why you had to experience this adventure alone without me. But I hope it gave you a glimpse into me the way I wanted you to see me— ORCUS. Strong… LILITH. Powerful… KALIOPE. And magical… CHUCK. (Closing the module.) Congratulations, you have finished the Quest for the Lost Soul of Athens. (Nguyen 82-83) So much of Tilly’s character emerges through her module. She constructed a character through which to explore her sexual identity, and she grieves for a love she so desperately wanted to grow before her tragic passing. In scene fifteen, Lilith’s death echoes this sentiment, as nearing the end of the play and the finale of Tilly’s campaign, Tilly’s love interest, Lilith dies at the hands of Evil Tina and Gabbi. Agnes, attempting to convince her DM Chuck to resurrect Lilith, states, “I'm not going to let my sister just suffer like this” (Nguyen 60), but is reminded that it is a game and the rules dictate Lilith cannot be brought back, to which Agnes responds “I was getting to know you [Tilly]. I was just starting to get to know you” (Nguyen 61). Scene fourteen’s resolution is the defeat of Evil Tina and Gabbi. After the death of Lilith, Agnes 40 challenges the succubi to a dance battle (Nguyen 69). While competing, the succubi seem to have no prior knowledge of Agnes’ murderous intentions. Knowing she will lose to the cheerleaders, Agnes uses the dance battle as a distraction. When Evil Tina and Gabbi are unsurprisingly deemed victorious, their celebrations are cut short due to Agnes picking up a weapon and driving it “through their unsuspecting enemies” (Nguyen 69) killing Evil Tina and Gabbi. Agnes is able to defeat her late sister’s high school bullies, thus creating a blueprint. In scene thirteen, Agnes scares the real-life versions of Evil Tina and Gabbi when they try to convince her to buy a memorial ad in their year book for Tilly. In response, Agnes “violently throws it [the yearbook] against the walls” (Nguyen 61). Tilly says “that seemed really effective”, to which Agnes retorts, “what am I supposed to do, Tilly? I can’t beat up students”, and Tilly states, “I woulda” (Nguyen 61). It is unsure how Agnes has the ability to speak to Tilly in her classroom, which suggests she may be still roleplaying with Chuck or she imagines Tilly’s presence in her daily life. This moment between the sister’s foreshadows Agnes being the one to defeat the in-game manifestations of Evil Tina and Gabbi. She does what Tilly in life could not do and in doing creates a utopic blueprint, one that contained the possibility for Tilly to receive resolution for the bullying she endured in school. Tilly used Dungeons and Dragons as a space to develop New Landia and experiment with her core characteristics and ambitions. Beyond a sapphic partnership, what she wanted was a sister who understood and gave space for her to feel strong, powerful, and magical. D&D afforded Tilly the chance to create a kind of utopic blueprint for queer futurity that José Esteban Muñoz theorizes (97). Tilly’s module reflects a blueprint of her own personal utopic fantasy. Tilly is full of hope that she will be the one to ‘get the girl’ (Nguyen 76). Beyond the hope Tilly had in real life, within the world of the play, Nguyen establishes the influence Tilly has on those 41 she loved even after her tragic passing. In Tilly’s D&D module, Agnes is guided towards a more authentic understanding of her sister. She gains a sense of how Tilly hoped the world would see her. In turn, Agnes also witnessed and experienced through simulated roleplay Tilly’s negative experiences of homophobia and the challenges of existing in a world that stigmatizes queerness. Through the module, Tilly was able to leave her own blueprint for a utopia in which she could express her full identity. Agnes’s discovery of this module offers “a horizon of possibility” (Muñoz 97) and by completing the adventure she gains a newfound acceptance for her sister. Agnes ends up continuing to play with Tilly’s friends, she carries forward her sister’s love of gaming and respect for the community Tilly sought out. Nguyen’s play demonstrates how queer youth can explore identity constructs and build more accepting communities through D&D play. 2.2 DUNGEONS & DRAG QUEENS While She Kills Monsters explores a young queer girl’s identity through a game module, Dungeons and Drag Queens explores constructs of gender and sexual identity through the drag queens that perform on stage and the characters they take on to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons (or in the interest of copyright, a similar TTRPG system) in front of a live audience. Just as Tilly uses her game module to embed her identity into the game play, Dungeons and Drag Queens allows drag queens to play as their dragsona or an adjacent version of themselves. In this analysis of DNDQ Live’s Dungeons and Drag Queens I will illustrate how the production centres identity traits such as gender and sexual identity, embodied through the performer’s dragsona and, by extension, their homebrewed PC. Since its inception in Seattle around 2021, each Dungeons and Drag Queens performance is location specific. In other words, as opposed to the 1990s Ohio setting of She Kills Monsters, Dungeons and Drag Queens performances tour to 42 different venues and different audiences, and the performers reference the specific sites to produce unique outcomes each time. In all performances, the Game Master, Paul Curry, offers audiences access into the world of his concocted sessions alongside improvising musician, Carson Grubb. Local audiences are addressed directly by the performers and have influence on how the story conveys locations, guilds, and sometimes encounters and/or items with which the players can interact. DNDQ Live’s productions of Dungeons and Drag Queens lean into the improvisational nature of D&D’s core game mechanics. This means that they emphasize those aspects of play that rely on the players (the queens, GM, and improvisational musician) thinking and translating their thoughts and actions in real time before a live audience. In an interview with Magic Con in 2024, Game Master Paul Curry revealed, that he had been introduced to D&D six years prior (in 2018) in college. Curry founded Dungeons and Drag Queens LIVE in Seattle in about 2021, and he described it as an “offshoot of a comedians-only DnD live-play show I was running out of a dive bar Thai restaurant, along with my friends in the Seattle drag community” (4). Upon Curry meeting Issa Man, a local Seattle drag performer, Curry identified the value drag performers could bring to his idea for a live D&D comedy show. Queens Issa Man, Kylie Mooncakes, and Midori Monet (formally known as Tinashéa Monet) became the first cast of the production (Graham 18). In an interview with Seattle Times journalist, Nathalie Graham, Curry talked about his relationship to working with the queens (who prior to this show had no D&D experience, but knew how to engage a crowd), he said, “this fantasy world is this house of cards I’ve set up and the queens’ job is to knock it down, to take everything I’ve meticulously planned and to stomp on it, twist it or force me to think on my feet to wrap the world back around” (Graham 23). In the same interview, Curry and Issa Man argued that the link between D&D and drag is escapism. To Graham, “Curry sees queer culture and nerd culture questioning boundaries 43 and probing beyond the norm” (35). Earlier in this chapter I flagged that Nguyen’s narrator also highlighted the overlap between nerd and queer cultures. In that play, performances were enacted from a script, not live, and Nguyen built layers of stage fiction in which D&D gameplay happened in tension with the other characters’ realties introduced onstage. By contrast, Dungeons and Drag Queens features live, improvised performances that, apart from the performer introductions and a brief rules explanation, follow the iconic and specific TTRPG set up: a game table stage right, a DM screen centre stage, and the addition of a live music set up stage left. At each production, three drag queens make up the cast (sometimes with local drag performers based on touring location) taking on a PC role. What unfolds is rooted in the live gameplay in front of a live audience. Incorporating queer representation into Dungeons and Dragons based media is not a new concept. Dropout for instance, a service dedicated to sharing comedy content producing shows like Dimension 20, Game Changer, Very Important People, and Dirty Laundry, embrace nerd-culture. Dimension 20 in particular hosts TTRPG content, one show of which is, Dungeons and Drag Queens which released on YouTube on July 5th, 2023. Featuring popular drag queens who got their starts on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Bob the Drag Queen (Season 8 winner), Monét X Change (All Star's Season 4 Winner), Alaska Thunderfuck (All Stars Season 2 Winner), and Jujubee (Season 2 and All Stars Season 5 Contestant) led by professional Game Master and comedian, Brennan Lee Mulligan has two seasons available on YouTube. What is seen and understood in both DNDQ Live’s touring (2021-present) production of Dungeons and Drag Queens and Dimension 20’s version of Dungeons and Drag Queens is the mapping of character through a drag lens. Some choose to dress and physically embody their character. For example, in the first performance I attended, DNDQ Live sourced a local Vancouver self-named drag 44 anomaly, Anya Anomaly, who performed dressed as a tiefling, a common race/species (especially amongst queer folks) whose lineage in D&D is traced from humans who made deals with fiends to ultimately increase their powers. Before exploring the use of drag in Dungeons and Drag Queens, I will offer some context to understanding drag in the heteronormative mainstream dominant culture and the history of drag in a theatrical context. A number of longstanding global theatre traditions have involved drag performance. For example, in Ancient Greece women were not permitted on stage so Medea, Antigone, Phaedra and all the female roles were originally performed by men. As Sue-Ellen Case writes, “woman" was played by male actors in drag, while actual women were banned from the stage” (318). Another example of drag in theatre include the boy players who originated so many female roles (for example, Shakespeare’s Juliet, Ophelia, and Lady MacBeth) in the Elizabethan period (Wells 174). Japanese kabuki theatre provides yet another example where traditionally “a grown-up man plays a female, whether young or old” (Ozaki 4). Sandoval reminds us that we can also think of “the mundane medieval carnivalesque traditions seen and still carried into the present day when men dress as women with exaggerated female features” (101). In tracing these histories of drag performance we can understand how contemporary queer performance embraces or rejects performance traditions. In contemporary western mainstream culture, many people’s introduction to the world of drag has been facilitated by none other than RuPaul Charles, the creator of RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR). Prior to today’s notions of drag, RuPaul belonged to the punk scene during the early 1980’s. He has since admitted that he felt the need to conform and perform pageantry to make the art of drag accessible for a white heterosexual audience, deliberately making the choice to sanitize his appearance for an overtly ‘real’ presentation of womanhood, and in doing so, scholar 45 Kareem Khubchandani declares RuPaul sold himself out to build a “NeolibeRUal empire” (191). While at first glance RuPaul’s Drag Race embraces gender experimentation, RuPaul’s standards are geared towards a capitalistic venture; queens must be polished, professional, and conform to the gender binary instead of unsettling it. A contestant’s female illusion must adhere to a perfect tuck (where their penis is taped to resemble a vagina/ female genitalia), painted to the gods (referencing impeccable makeup), and an hourglass figure with hidden padding. If any of the aforementioned attributes are slightly off, the judges critique the contestant as still male. This boy-to-girl binary transformation makes drag exclusive to cis-gendered individuals performing the opposite construct than they normally are perceived as. In their book, Decolonize Drag, Khubchandani reminds us that gender is an effect of circumstance. The performance of gender is produced in dialogue rendered through the dichotomy of subject and on-looker, referencing the personalized ways a performer’s audience understands how to decode and translate gender (Khubchandani 146). Looking at the “NeolibeRUal empire” (191) and their effort to strive for ‘realness’ over other forms of performing drag, realness and real aesthetics can be traced to the Ballroom scene of New York City, originated by the African-American and Latino LGBTQ2SIA+ communities being traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Competitions here would have contestants from collectives, also referred to as “houses” compete for awards based on an accumulation of runway looks and dance performances. Realness in this context acknowledges the way the contestants could perform in these categories in front of the judges with total precision that provoked a sense of ‘womanhood’ affirming the gender binary in drag performance (Bailey 59). Egner argues that, inherently “drag performers’ gender constructions are influenced by the characteristics of the space in which they are performing” (877). In other words, drag is a political negotiation with the world around the performer. 46 In contemporary mainstream drag, realness implies one’s ability to ‘serve fish,’ meaning, playing in hyper-femininity through not just looks but additionally through movements, gestures and mannerisms, and ideally being judged as authentic or natural. RuPaul’s Drag Race uses the term ‘realness’ to evoke to their audiences that if drag does not pass as feminine, it is inferior. This framing neglects the fact that for many realness is “part of a survival toolkit… outside of the ball, to pass is to be able to avoid transphobic harassment in public” (Khubchandani 150). Drag performances might be valued as a pedagogical form where creative survival strategies are shared and rehearsed. RPDR has influenced a mainstream North American cultural imagery to seemingly adopt a singular restrictive definition of drag and to see anything outside of what RuPaul televises as outside the norm, (the norm seemingly being the heteronormative version of queerness that has been celebrated for the performance of perceived womanhood). This sanitized version of queerness shown on RPDR is the most palatable to straight audiences and diminishes the fact that drag is not only a parody of gender conventions, but an abstraction. The production values of DNDQ are much less polished and resourced than RPDR and the live playing of D&D places less focus on judging the realness and more on following the gameplay, this also creates more opportunities to challenge gender stereotypes. I attended two Vancouver performance of DNDQ Live’s touring (2021-present) production of Dungeons and Drag Queens. The first took place on March 23rd, 2024 at the Firehall Arts Centre where two of the three queens played by Issa Man and Midori Monet seemingly aimed to serve a version of what I would consider as RuPaul’s understanding of ‘fish’ and the third, Anya Anomaly (also being the player invited - not a part of the fixed cast), opted to dress as a tiefling which I understood as playing on the otherworldly qualities and appearances of D&D races/species and in tandem touching on the villainization of drag and queer performance styles; implicating that 47 queerness is perverted, a monstrosity. This also speaks to the “moral panic” era I discussed in chapter one (Waldron 4). As anti-queer, right-wing movements aim for the abolishment of homosexuality, they have weaponized religion to attack the queer community2. Anti-queer protests often draw on morality and discussions of sin to project their ideologies. In Catholicism and Christianity, sin is often associated with the devil, and while tieflings are not devils, they have infernal ancestry referring to the species descending from fiends and/or devils within the game. We can read this costuming choice as a means of illuminating these past histories as well as a challenge to the more hegemonic “serving fish” form of drag. Dungeons and Dragons is heavily influenced by fantasy which contains elements of monstrosity. This is evident both in the form of NPC foes a player might encounter as well as in how some players might choose to play themselves. Monstrosities in the simplest sense are unnatural creatures, creatures that do not fit the norm or status-quo. In fantasy, monstrosities are typically the result of a curse or magical experiment that has gone awry. Monsters often resemble the non-human, whereas monstrosities can resemble both the non-human (beasts, animals, etc.…) and human-like species (referred to as humanoids in game, that are considered aliens that reflect the physical form of a human being with attributes such as bipedalism). In the case of Anya Anomaly’s tiefling costuming, tieflings had been initially introduced in Dungeons and Dragons second edition, in the Planescape campaign setting as an available player race in the 2 As anti-trans rhetoric continues gaining traction, the American conservative right opts to ban forms of drag performance, such as Drag Queen Storytime (DQS) in public libraries or books stores. How society defines drag is highly concerning and can result in severe and dangerous political consequences (Kammerer et al. 4) targeting the queer community. 48 setting. In their introduction, tieflings were from the “lower planes” also known as the evil aligned planes. Later in the third edition of the game, tieflings were described as descended from fiends—who are classified as vicious creatures. In the fourth and fifth editions of the game, tieflings were written to be a race descended from a group of humans who made a bargain with devils to increase their power. Tieflings evoke a rejection of Christian norms through their devilish features (such as different physical appearances like horns) being aspects players can choose to have their characters take pride in3. Earlier in this chapter I argued that when Nguyen made Lilith’s class “Demon Queen” (16) it seemed to be an allegory for her coming out. Similarly, in DNDQ, when Anya dresses as a tiefling, they consciously signals their alignment with deviance, monstrosity and other challenges to the status quo. Jack Halberstam argues that the term monstrosity alongside the “fear it gives rise to is historically conditioned rather than a physiological universal” (6). Moreso, Halberstam states that “the body that scares and appalls changes over time, as do the individual characteristics that add up to monstrosity, as do the preferred interpretations of that monstrosity” (8). While it is not for me to state who performs the construct of gender successfully, generally speaking, to perform drag is to disturb regardless of the intentions to serve or to pass or to embrace monstrosity. What I am curious about is what does it say to have a representation of monstrosity on stage in relation to queens that serve ‘fish’ and how does homebrew create possibilities for these gender expressions within the game? 3 The fantasy racism experienced by tieflings is due to generations-old dealings with devils is another critique of how real-world bigotry is considered in the game. 49 Drag queens, kings, or things will adopt a ‘dragsona’ –where performers “expand who they are through the use of creating their personas. They are completing their self-image through the use of another gender and appearance” (Greaf 662). When creating a dragsona, just like building a PC, there is intention behind each thought, attribute, and characteristic. To some, their character serves as an extension of themselves, others a complete reimagining. Like D&D, drag gives one license to play within one’s persona. In Dungeons and Drag Queens, the combination of the homebrew improvisation and the drag context offers unusual opportunities for players to explore queer identity. At the start of every performance Curry states that the queens will be playing as themselves. In the first performance I viewed, queens Issa Man and Midori Monet played versions of their dragsonas. In contrast, the guest performer, Anya Anomaly, a self-labelled “drag anomaly” – standing for something that deviates from the norm, or what is to be expected- bridges queer identity with nerd culture, similar to how Tilly used her homebrew module of New Landia to connect herself to the world of D&D. As mentioned in chapter one, D&D was not created with queer narratives in mind. Every time the queens in Dungeons and Drag Queens flirt with GM Paul Curry and his many NPCs there is a queer subtext present when audiences understand that a cis-man is flirting with a drag queen. The queens when developing their characters might work with Curry to develop homebrew sexual orientation labels that the games might not account for, or different gender presentations aside from what is considered their character’s biological sex. Now with the inclusion of D&D fifth edition, more and more queer characters have been introduced into the game’s canon, however, representation is not total, and there is still more active progress to be made. Introducing drag queens into the world of D&D is possible through homebrew, and as exemplified through DNDQ Live’s Dungeons and Drag Queens, showcases the effort being made by queer artists for representation in TTRPGs. 50 In the second performance I saw on November 9th, 2024, also at Vancouver’s Firehall Arts Centre, the queens presented their identity in different ways, but nonetheless also continued to challenge queer representation in D&D through performances of homebrew characterization and their dragsona. At this performance, Issa Man and Midori Monet returned with the new additions of Kylie Mooncakes, another Seattle-based queen and performer and who was a part of the original cast and Shay Dior a local Vancouver drag performer who was very familiar with the games mechanics. In this performance, Kylie Mooncakes graced the audience with an impromptu dance sequence upon rolling a successful check. Kylie Mooncakes’ improvisational dance number shifted the tone of the overall score transitioning into a cued upbeat pop audio track, notably the only musical accompaniment not played by Carson Grubb. Kylie Mooncakes began celebrating her success with twerking and stylizing her moments to be hyper-feminine and sexually driven akin to a traditional drag routine one might see at a drag show. This moment reminded me of how a bard (a D&D spellcasting class associated with performance, dance, lyricism, and music) might react to a successful performance role. In the new 2024 ruleset, D&D introduced the “College of Dance”, a bard subclass that refers to dance as a magical art form, meaning a bard could use dance as a performance enhancer or help their combat abilities (Wizards of the Coast 64). There is also a sixth-level enchantment spell called “Otto's Irresistible Dance” (Wizards of the Coast 102) where the player can choose one creature they can see within range (30 feet) to target. Automatically, due to the high nature of the spell the target begins a comic dance in its place until the duration of the spell is up or after one turn of dance, they are able to make a successful wisdom saving roll. During the dance, the target must use up all of their movement without actually exiting the space in which the spell was cast on them. While Kylie Mooncakes’ dance was not the result of a spell or enchantment, it did serve to remind me 51 of how theatricality is embedded in D&D and can be used as a means of gender and sexual identity exploration. Other moments where gender and sexual identity came into play during both performances I saw encouraged flirtation as a form of role play. In the first performance I witnessed, a queen flirted with one of the male guards the party needed to get past in order to complete their mission. Later, upon a successful spell check, he became infatuated with her. Beyond flirting with Curry who was playing as the NPCs, the queens would banter with Curry in attempts to fluster him, often commenting on their physical race as in both shows, all the queens were Persons of Colour (POC) and Curry is a white cis man. As in the impromptu dance number, the audience was a co-conspirator in each performance, not only having the opportunity to choose the names of locations, guilds, and sometimes encounters, the queens would turn to the audience as if we were accomplices in their shenanigans looking for cheers to help fuel their chaos. The audience is positioned to be aligned with the queens and invited to cheer them on to success in the game. In this way, the show concept builds a site for queer community building in which a blueprint for utopia can be charted live and together. 2.3 CONCLUSION As exemplified by the queens of DNDQ, improvisation can lead into moments of homebrew and all kinds of chaos that reflect not only themselves but the circumstances in which they are playing. Allowing homebrew in campaigns creates room for players to embody and act alongside each other at the table thus becoming a space where an authentic reaction can arise based on improvisational offers. In both She Kills Monsters, and Dungeons and Drag Queens, identity is shown in varying interpersonal ways through in-game customization options that allow players 52 to disrupt the original intentions of the game. In She Kills Monsters this happens through Tilly’s D&D module. In Dungeons and Drag Queens, it happens through how the queens access the world of the game through their already established dragsonas. Both case studies highlight the importance of having the freedom of exploration and a community that allows for a safe experience —the queens playing for fellow queer or allied audiences, and Agnes’s finding a way to connect with her late sister by gaming with her former friends. D&D relies on community engagement; a campaign cannot occur without a group of “nerds” as Nguyen might put it, forming their own community and expressing themselves in gameplay.53 Chapter 3: Reporting Participant Experiences Playing D&D and Identity Experimentation in Game 3.1 INTRODUCTION Public performances shape and are shaped by cultural imaginaries. They can construct and/or perpetuate enduring narratives and character types (or stereotypes) of queerness and geekdom. In the previous chapter, I investigated how She Kills Monsters and Dungeons and Drag Queens each provide examples of young adult queer people building characters that help them to explore gender and sexual identity within D&D worlds. Both examples helped to demonstrate theatrical elements built into D&D as well as the game’s openness to homebrews. While in that chapter I explored these public performances and the narratives they circulate, in this chapter I focus on the specific, personal experiences and perceptions of actual queer D&D players, especially in terms of how they use theatrical and performative elements of the game to explore identity. Further, I consider to what degree these experiences resonated with the performance narratives discussed in the previous chapter. 3.2 LITERATURE REVIEW D&D offers players unique opportunities to explore facets of themselves they might not have had the opportunity to explore outside of the game due to levels of safety, accessibility, or social norms. In his 1994 study "Dungeons and Dragons: The use of a fantasy game in the psychotherapeutic treatment of a young adult", Wayne D. Blackmon examines a case study with a previous client, a suicidal boy who frequently discussed harmful fantasies towards himself and 54 his family members, particularly his brother who had been diagnosed with a developmental disability (624). Through the container of fantasy roleplay, actively participating in D&D groups allowed him to un-pack those emotions and form a community. Through gameplay he was able to explore those tendencies in the campaign and later debrief with his therapist in ways he described as helpful. This process helped him to uncover and manage hostile feelings he had for his brother, feelings he had been unable to express outside the game. Effectively, D&D allowed him to express himself imaginatively rather than physically. The case study focuses on the boy’s character’s feelings and motives in relation to his own outside the game (Blackmon 627). While my study distinctly does not focus on the therapeutic or psychological effects of D&D gaming, this case study raised important questions for me about the possibilities the game creates for imaginative and pro-social expressions of identity. A growing body of research with links to dramatherapy explores the health and psychological benefits as well as the risks of D&D. Using grounded theory methodology, in 2017 Darrin Coe investigated the motivations behind why people play table-top roleplaying games (TTRPGs) to understand if there could be a “single supra-motivator” (2844). Coe theorized that this “single supra-motivator” (2844) could unveil a larger theory as to why people participate in TTRPGs. Coe interviewed fourteen people who attended four-year college programs and played TTRPGs, as well as two people also attended four-year college programs but did not play. Coe found a common theme connected to “the theoretical category of ‘becoming’” (2844). Coe discovered “that there were two primary motivations related to people initiating participating in TTRPGs: Being Recruited and Creative Curiosity.” (2856) Beyond that the other factors were “Imaginative Creativity, Exploring and Knowing Self, Belonging and Interacting, Relief and Safety, and Learning” (Coe 2853). Coe’s theme “Exploring and knowing 55 self” (2853) centres the player’s motivation to roleplay using group and individual identity work. Coe discovered that in his sample, participants were motivated to construct characters that reflected themselves or parts of themselves that they wished to explore further, as well as characters that did not in any way reflect their reality. From his research, we can infer that individuals who engage in TTRPGs have the ability to explore identity development in a community-based way. By exploring different characterizations, players can receive social input on their decisions (beyond the dice-rolling mechanics of the game). For example, when a player offers an improvisational invitation, it is greeted with a response from either the DM or the other players. Their response may offer significant change to the course of the narrative and thus teach the player to recognize response patterns from their fellow players. Thus, feedback in the structure of community storytelling informs future interactions. Moreover, PCs mingle with other PCs doing the same thing. A person’s social identity can morph and map onto those around them, implying “that a person is neither singular or plural, adopting and evolving different identities” (Anderson 22). Like Coe, I am curious about how this in-performance exchange can build on particular sexual and gender identities that emerge, form, and evolve through the games. In a 2021 study most similar to my own, “Roll for Identity: A Study of Tabletop Roleplaying Games and Exploring Identity”, Toriana M. Shepherd conducted an ethnographic study that involved playing D&D with five queer participants and following up about their gameplay with narrative inquiry-based interviews. Shepherd took on the role of the group’s DM to witness in real time queer players engaging in gameplay and whether their actions in game showed an effort of trying to understand their identity through the game (16). Ultimately, Shepherd came to the conclusion that, “through the use of narrative empathy . . . Dungeons and Dragons is a key tool that can be used to help people understand who they are, and who others 56 are” (70). Shepherd also noted that the discussions allowed at a table are contingent upon what a DM is willing to portray. Discussions of queerness may not be facilitated depending on the narrative and how the DM wishes to receive certain improvisational offers. Exploring the relationship between D&D and queer experience from a different angle, Femia Giuseppe’s 2023 article, "Reparative play in Dungeons & Dragons”, looks at how the game facilitates queer rhetoric to understand the “reparative value” (80) it can bring to queer folks. Drawing on an autoethnographic reflection of the author’s own experience playing these games as a member of the ace community (people who identify on the asexual spectrum), Giuseppe seeks to understand how when embodying a “D&D character set in a more accepting world, the players can enact reparative play to give an accurate and positive representation of themselves while promoting alternatives to heteronormative culture” (Femia 80). D&D in this reading becomes a site of queer performativity. To Giuseppe, “reparative play is enacted by queer performativity so that the player experiences healing by exacting their autonomy through their actions” (81). This idea resonates with Muñoz’s identification of other utopian blueprints or queer performance spaces in that D&D allows players respite from heteronormative contexts and offers the opportunity to engage fully in queer performativity. Characters could be constructed, for example, to allow the player to be hailed by different pronouns or identify with a different sexual identity. Earlier in this thesis I noted that Dungeons and Dragons was not designed with queer perspectives in mind (Yessler & Craig 2). The growing prominence of queer D&D communities, however, suggests that it offers generative means for queer players to explore constructs like identity. An important inspiration for my research here is Bo Ruberg’s 2020 The Queer Games Avant Garde, a collection of twenty interviews with twenty-two queer video game developers. 57 Reading Ruberg’s study from a theatre and performance studies perspective illuminates how the questions that drive game development resonate often with those that theatre and performance artists ask themselves before embarking on a production: How do you tell a gripping story? How do you get people to care? Why should they care? How will the characters be distinguished from each other and in what ways will they be linked? In the Queer Games Avant Garde, Ruberg finds a movement centred around queer game makers developing work that engages with their lived experiences (1). Ruberg’s model helped me to discern the kinds of questions I wanted to explore for my own interviews with self-identified queer D&D players. Ruberg’s inquiries have strong resonances with a standard theatre and performance studies text assigned often to undergraduates interested in how to understand theatre: Elinor Fuchs’ "EF's visit to a small planet: some questions to ask a play.” Fuchs encourages students and other critics to remember that a play functions as a discrete world replete with its own distinctive organizing principles. Of particular relevance to my research goals here are the following questions: “How many performances are signalling to you from inside this world? How many echoes of other dramatic worlds do they suggest? How do these additional layers of theatricality comment on what you have already discovered?” (Fuchs 9). While relevant to theatre, these are also key questions players ask when trying to navigate a fantasy realm. In a game of D&D, the performer “crosses one threshold when entering the room and again another when entering into the play or imaginative space of storytelling, role-playing and improvisation, into a magical world of ‘as ifs’” (Sweeney 3). In other words, the “as ifs” can function like Muñoz’s blueprints for utopia (97). D&D roles map easily onto the standard roles in contemporary theatre production; the DM is like the director, playwright, and an actor playing multiple NPCs, with other PCs serving as co-writers and actors. 58 Returning to his 2014 chapter, “Critical hits & critical spaces: Roleplaying games and their potential in developing critical literacy and new literacy practices”, Kevin Smith likens his approach of introducing RPGs as a way of aiding players in critical literacy development (239) to Augusto Boal’s 1974 book, Theatre of the Oppressed (248). Smith draws on his own experience as a secondary school teacher and considers RPGs as a way to “mobilise a critical performative pedagogy” (239). How Smith relates RPGs to Boal is through “spectator actors” (126), where during scenes of conflicts audience members wield the power to stop the performance to suggest alternative solutions (139). Smith further relates the role of the DM to Boal's “Joker” (175), being a facilitator of narrative. Boal’s definition of the “Joker” is they are “neighbor of the spectator” and in live theatre, “it is necessary to move him [the Joker] away from the other characters [actors on stage], to bring him close to the spectators” (Boal 175). Boal’s suggested system of the “Joker” dwindles their narration to be dependent on two instances, “that of fable (which can use all the conventional imaginative resources of the theatre), and that of the “lecture”, in which the “Joker” becomes an exegete” (175). Boal’s considerations of “spectator actors” (126) and the “Joker” (175) relate to RPGs, most namely, Dungeons and Dragons, in that, as Smith suggests, the DM plays a similar role. The DM is a central role to how audiences and players comprehend the story. In the example of Dungeons and Drag Queens, Paul Curry assumes the role of the “Joker”. Not only does he mediate between his fellow performers on stage, additionally, he is the audience’s primary conduit into the world of the performance. In She Kills Monsters, Chuck assumes this role for Agnes by facilitating the gameplay of her late sister’s D&D module. Drawing on Smith’s interpretation of Boal as applied to TTRPGs, and Fuchs’ critical questions guiding what makes a theatrical world, I am interested 59 in whether and how the theatrical elements of D&D contribute to how players use the game to explore identity. In summary, while D&D has been found to have psychological benefits, there has been a lack of studies investigating the use of D&D to explore queer identity through a theatre studies or performance studies lens. Given the theatrical nature of the game, this could be a productive area of exploration because the game’s roleplay mechanics draw on a player’s understanding of performance and overall acting exposure. Understanding queer identity exploration through D&D from a theatre studies lens might encourage players to engage more with the rich performance possibilities built into the game. 3.3 STUDY PURPOSE & RESEARCH QUESTION The purpose of the study in this chapter was to understand the relationship between theatricality (which points to conscious player choices about props, voice, costume, gestures, and character traits), player identity (looking specifically at players who identify on the queer spectrum) and character creation within D&D. The primary research question under investigation was: how do D&D players, aged 18 to 30-years-old, who identify on the queer spectrum, understand and experience the relationship between their character creations and theatrical choices during D&D gameplay, and their identity (especially related to gender and sexual identity) outside the game? I am also interested in how their experiences compare to the themes revealed in the performances discussed in chapter 2. 60 3.4 STUDY DESIGN This qualitative study was rooted in a constructivist paradigm (Cresswell & Poth 20). Social constructivism is understood as the idea that there are multiple realities formed through human interactions (Cresswell & Poth 21). Within this, the researcher also acknowledges their own role in shaping and interpreting participants’ stories. The methodology I used was narrative analysis (Cresswell & Poth 55) as “narrative stories tell of individual experiences, and they may shed light on the identities of individuals and how they see themselves” (80). To develop themes describing participants’ narratives of exploring identity through D&D, I used Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis as my method of analysis (5-24). The study outlined in this chapter received ethical approval from the University of British Columbia’s Behavioral Research Ethics Board (certificate number H23-03172), and all participants provided informed consent to take part in the study (for consent form see Appendix A). 3.5 RECRUITMENT In order to explore my research question, I recruited participants who met the following inclusion criteria (or characteristics): they were between the ages of 18-30 (classified as young adults), they identified on the queer spectrum, they had experience playing Dungeons & Dragons, spoke English (in order to participate collaboratively), and were able and willing to provide informed consent. All participants were recruited from the general public through the researcher’s social media (Discord and Instagram) where an approved recruitment poster was shared (see Appendix B). Recruitment also took place via the University of British Columbia’s Department of Theatre and Film’s email list, for undergraduate and graduate students within the Department of Theatre and Film. The study used voluntary response sampling, including all 61 eligible people who expressed interest and that met the inclusion criteria. The sample size of six participants was guided by the concept of “information power” (Malterud et al. 1754). Information power holds that the more information a sample holds that is relevant to the study, the fewer participants are needed (Malterud et al. 1754). Since the aim of my study was relatively narrow and participants had highly specific characteristics, and since all participants shared clear and detailed dialogue, a small sample size was appropriate. The research context of this being a master's study, which includes time and funding constraints, also influenced the sample size. 3.6 DATA COLLECTION After participants signed consent forms they were emailed a demographic form (see Appendix C) which they returned by email. Additional data collection involved one semi-structured zoom interview with each participant. I conducted all interviews. In total six interviews took place following UBC’s guidelines for Zoom conferencing in research (“Zoom Conferencing in Research” 1); each lasted between 45 minutes to 2 hours and 30 minutes. The interviews were guided by open-ended questions (see Appendix D for sample questions) which were informed by the themes identified in She Kills Monsters and Dungeons and Drag Queens, as well as the models provided by Bo Ruberg and Elinor Fuchs that I outlined in the introduction to this chapter. My questions also built from my own considerable experience as a queer D&D player. The interview questions centred around four main topics: performance, narrative, character creation, and identity. All zoom interviews were recorded using my UBC zoom account and saved to the zoom cloud. Interview audio and video files were then transferred to UBC’s secure OneDrive. They were transcribed using the auto-transcription feature in the version of Word in 62 UBC OneDrive. I then reviewed all recordings for accuracy, de-identified them and replaced the participants’ names with pseudonyms. All digital documents (i.e., demographic questionnaires, consent forms, participant contact information, interview recordings and de-identified interview transcripts) were password protected and stored on UBC OneDrive. Identifiable participant information (i.e., consent forms, pseudonym list) are stored separately in a password-protected file. All hard copy files are stored in a locked cabinet in Dr. Kirsty Johnston’s locked UBC office. The data will remain on UBC OneDrive for at least five years after publication, after which it will be securely destroyed following UBC protocols for destruction of research data. 3.7 DATA ANALYSIS To analyze the data of this study, I turned to Braun and Clarke’s analytic process in their 2021 book, Thematic Analysis A Practical Guide. This method of analysis is broken into a set of six phases as follows: the first being dataset familiarization, the second: data coding, the third: initial theme generation, fourth: theme development and review, fifth: theme refining, defining and naming, and lastly sixth is writing up (Braun & Clarke 6). Following Braun and Clarke’s model, I first familiarized myself with the data set by re-listening to the interviews and correcting the transcripts for accuracy, and then by reading and re-reading the interview transcripts. Second, I engaged in initial coding of each transcript. This involved using the comment feature on the transcript Word document to code parts of the transcript, keeping the code names as close to the data as possible (often using brief participant quotations as code names). I then moved the initial coded data on an excel spreadsheet and grouped these low-level initial codes into higher-level, more abstract codes through a process of comparing and contrasting, considering similarities and 63 differences, and also noting negative cases. Next, I took those higher-level codes and used a digital post-it note board to compare and contrast codes, and sort compatible data into themes. Throughout this process, I met often with my co-supervisor, Dr. Julia Henderson, to discuss coding and prospective themes. Through these discussions, we narrowed down and defined the themes into three categories. 3.8 ESTABLISHING TRUSTWORTHINESS Trustworthiness is a way of establishing rigor in qualitative research (Morse 1212). Drawing on Egon Guba’s 1981 seminal article, “Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries” (79-87), and Janice M. Morse’s more recent critique “Critical Analysis of Strategies for Determining Rigor in Qualitative Inquiry” (2015), I have considered ways to enhance the validity (how well the research presents the actual phenomenon), reliability (ability to obtain the same results if the study were to be repeated) and generalizability (the degree to which findings could be extended to other groups) (Morse 1213) of my study findings. As such, I have employed the following strategies to enhance rigor: I prepared a reflexivity statement prior to engaging in data collection to document my positionality and assumptions, and I referred back to this throughout the process to remain reflexive about my biases. I kept a detailed record about my coding decisions, which included memos about ideas I had regarding the data, and coding choices I made. I explored and documented negative cases (instances where a participant reported something in contrast to what other participants expressed). I met regularly with my research supervisor to share and discuss my coding ideas, which helped me remain reflexive throughout the process. I engaged deeply with the data and developed thick descriptions of the themes incorporating many participant quotations. 64 3.9 DESCRIPTION OF SAMPLE In total, I interviewed six participants over Zoom. Most calls lasted between forty-minutes to just over an hour, but one call lasted over two-hours. Participants ranged in age from 19 to 29 years old. The participants' highest education levels vary from a high school diploma to a master’s degree; however, all were currently students studying in a post-secondary institution, with a collective economic status between middle-to upper-middle class (which may have relevance in terms of access to technology for online gaming, and leisure time to spend on gaming). Four identified as women, one as agender, and one as non-binary. In terms of sexual identity, one participant identified as pansexual, three bisexual, one identified as lesbian, two queer, and one as asexual. Four identified as white, and two participants identified their ethnicity other than white. In terms of game experience, the most novice D&D player at the time of recruitment had been playing for ten months, whereas the most experienced player had been playing on and off for eight years. Except for the individual who had been playing for ten months, the other participants had been playing D&D for a minimum of two years. Half of the participants had experienced other table-top-role-playing games (TTRPGs) such as Pathfinder, Starfinder, Monster Hearts, and Call of Cthulhu, the other half had not experienced any other TTRPG systems. Others enjoyed playing in pre-built universes outside of the trademark D&D, like the DC (Detective Comics) universe. Those who played other TTRPGs had experience playing them for three to nine years, with one preferring them to D&D. Two of the six participants play D&D mostly in person, while the others meet with their respective groups virtually. However, all six participants stated that their preference was to play in person. Lastly, in terms of theatrical experience, all participants reported having an above average level of experience with and 65 knowledge of theatre. This was likely due to the nature of participant recruitment through the University of British Columbia’s Department of Theatre and Film’s email list and my own social media. 3.10 THEMATIC FINDINGS I identified three primary themes across the six individual interviews. The first theme, which I entitle “DUNGEONS and DRAGONS: player context,” concerns the many details that interviewees shared about how they contextualize the role of Dungeons and Dragons in their lives. The second theme, “D&D Parties” emerges from the interviewees’ frequent references to the importance of the party settings in their decision to pursue the game and to their explorations of identity. The third theme, “Character Creation” focuses on the many details interviewees shared about their strategies, initiatives and choices about Character Creation and how these related to their identity explorations. Although these themes do not encompass every aspect of the interview data, together they comprise key areas of common interest and concern. 3.10.1 DUNGEONS and DRAGONS: PLAYER CONTEXT An important aspect of understanding how people might use Dungeons and Dragons as an effective tool and site for gender and sexual identity exploration comes from learning how one might play the game. This encompasses what genres and other influences players might be drawn to, player understandings of fantasy and fiction, and the player’s theatrical experience and gaming experience. Ultimately, this section speaks to personal context. Participants described being drawn to D&D because of its many possibilities for exploration related to genre, content, game structures, and characters. For example, Silvia 66 described the appeal of D&D to them as, “the thing with narratives and fake worlds and even worlds, you kind of know already. You just get to try things and experiment..." Overall, participants were drawn to the escapism fantasy offers. For example, Genevieve said, "I love fantasy. I prefer to live in fantasy. A world where anything is possible". Thalia explained, “in a fantasy world you know there's less consequences to your actions, so you can take more risks," before going on to state, “in the fantasy world, you know, you can kind of express all the stuff that you have to shut down in real life.” Similarly, Saoirse felt that there is "a lot more safety in fiction." He described that part of this safety was the opportunity to try out ideas with minimal consequences, "like I'll try things out. I'll like workshop these ideas for real life and then I'll come back to them later. Or just leave them in this space." Saoirse points to the allowance TTRPGs like D&D afford players to grapple with identity constructs and the reassurance that the player does not have to carry their explorations into their real life outside of gameplay. Overall participants connected the fantasy aspect of D&D to possibilities, opportunities, and risk taking with relative safety. D&D style varied amongst the participants. Some also enjoyed the classic fantasy genre as Genevieve explained, "I prefer like the typical like D&D, kind of like a RenFair [renaissance fair], sort of. That kind of like medieval Europe-esque vibes is what I always think about fantasy. Yes, a lot of parallels with real life, I guess, like historical-esqueness.” Most participants preferred the fifth edition rulebook (originally published on August 19, 2014) and not the update released in 2024. Silvia said, "I'm not moving to 2024" referring to the rule change. Another participant, Thalia expressed in a similar vein, "the new 2024 whatever, rule set, no, I’m a 5e purist." 67 Other participants described yearning for something beyond what the parent text offers, turning to a homebrew style of playing D&D. This seemed to be linked to the opportunities that homebrew offers for identity exploration. Homebrew was seen as offering more imaginative possibilities, as Silvia suggests, Having a homebrew game means you can really have fun playing in a world that you know already, or you get to experience an entirely new world. That, I think is more interesting than what D&D itself has offered with their world. Their world is cool, but their world is stereotypical. And not the greatest place for minorities to play a lot of the time. So you know it's... I think homebrew is something special, especially for my DM's. Homebrew in this context could maybe go as far as to suggest a form of resistance from oppressive racial stereotypes. In D&D, playable races are between a binary of “human” or “demi-human” referring to human-like races a character can be (Garcia 240). In the past, D&D has received critiques around their depictions of their playable "monsters", such as orcs and half-orcs that draw on racial stereotypes and before the addition of the fifth edition to the game, most humans and demi-human images were depicted as White heroic characters (Garcia 241)4. 4 Antero Garcia’s article, “Privilege, Power, and Dungeons & Dragons: How Systems Shape Racial and Gender Identities in Tabletop Role-Playing Games” additionally points out how D&D has parallels to racist histories using half-orcs as an example as they as a playable race have a feature called, “Grudging Acceptance: [where] each half-orc finds a way to gain acceptance from those who hate orcs. Some are reserved, trying not to draw attention to 68 Silvia’s point about homebrew acknowledges the troublesome histories that D&D brings into the game that still maintain systems of oppression concerning minorities. Silvia’s comment also demonstrates that for participants in this study the risk of experiencing minority discrimination is quite real, but homebrew allows players to construct meaningful narratives that do not rely on harmful depictions of minorities. Theatre and acting experience is not a precursor to engaging in a session or one-shot within the Dungeons and Dragons universe. For the participants in this study, however, having previous theatrical experience gave them confidence in the improvisational encounters with their fellow players, especially when those players also had a theatrical background. For Thalia, "whenever I'd play like with kind of my theater friends, the role play was always a lot more dynamic, and I didn't usually have to take as like heavy of a hand with getting everyone else to kind of get involved". Thalia highlights how theatre and improvisation experience can enhance player satisfaction: the kind of best players that I've been in a campaign with definitely have improved back at me building off of kind of what I've been saying. Like if we're having a conversation that's like important to our character development, they'll like, take the time to think about how their character would react in response that's like within the bounds of, yeah their back story and whatever. themselves...” (Wizards of the Coast 41). Upon criticism from fans, the game’s fifth edition has since attempted to change the problematic framing of half-orcs, however, many believe more work needs to be done. 69 Some participants found that the immediate feedback in their improvisations made identity exploration richer, more detailed, and ultimately more fulfilling for participants. Silvia spoke to the desire to implement “real feelings” into their games saying, “if you experiment with something without real feelings. To be either a better person with your gender, with your sexuality, yada yada, yada. If you experiment with something without real feelings. It's not real. Your results won't exist in a tangible fashion.” Thalia, reflected on what kept her returning to the game in comparison to her theatrical endeavours by stating, “I always liked theatre. I liked playing a character. I liked the friends I've made through theatre. And yeah, I guess it was always fun to create our own characters [in D&D] instead of the ones that our teachers assigned to us. And yeah, fill out the fantasy of being a main character if we were ever cast in the ensemble.” Thalia’s reflection speaks to how having a theatrical background adds to the ease and facility with which participants were able to engage in role play. Thalia considered the opportunities D&D granted her of being “a main character.” Thalia likened this idea of getting to play as a leading character in her game to being casted as the lead in a theatrical show to being a fantasy. Silvia, who also comes from an extensive theatre background, often spoke of how they would portray their characters and acting challenges they faced, for example, "I [Silvia] did 2 sessions with this character, nearly nonverbal. That was an acting challenge. Because of an experience of basically PTSD that my character had." Thalia and Silvia reflected on how their theatrical understandings aided their overall role play— this suggests, in having prior knowledge 70 and/or experience of theatre such as acting training may allow more vibrant narrative scenes to unfold naturally. Overall, this theme, speaks to player context and describes how the queer players in this study navigate the game and with that, what histories and theatrical backgrounds they came into it with. Key points that emerged were, all participants had expressed being drawn to the fantasy and escapism the game offered and how previous theatrical experiences in improvisation allowed for more dynamic role play. It is important to consider the contexts in which participants comprehend and play the game to further understand how they could use it to explore gender and sexual identity. 3.10.2 D&D PARTIES Another way participants explored identity was through in-game and outside-game relationships with other players. When the interviewees and other players refer to a D&D party, they mean the group of people with whom they play the game. The term refers to the particular people in an adventuring group that the person plays alongside. It is a gathering where players are grouped together to complete missions that serve their bigger motive (an example might be to defeat a supervillain that goes against the group's morals, etc...). Some of the interviewees noted that they preferred some roles in the party more than others. Of the six participants I interviewed, only one participant, Saoirse, had a complete preference for DMing/ GMing over playing. He explained that, I need structure in terms of permission of when to speak. So if I have an idea off the rip of something GM is saying and somebody else comes in, I wait and then I wait till 71 everyone else is done talking to make sure they get their turn for their character moment and by that point there's usually nothing more for me to add. In the quote above, Saoirse is referring to the social structure of the game. Roleplay is dependent on respecting those with whom you play. However, due to the nature of social scripts, conversation processing and turn-taking, it might be difficult to jump into the action or party dialogue. For Saoirse, taking on the DM/GM provided structure to ensure his fuller engagement in the game. By contrast, others found the role of DM daunting and less fun. Out of the remaining five participants, while some have had experience DMing, they all preferred to be a player in the game. This related to the challenges they perceived as inherent to role of DM. These participants underlined the difficulties of having time to invest in creating a world for players that, in turn, would likely be destroyed in front of their eyes. As Tasha describes, players never do exactly what I want them to do, so it should be session by session planning and I don't have the capacity to plan like weekly or biweekly or even monthly because I have a dream. And if my dream goes away then like I get filled with that anxiety of, “well, what's happening now”? To most participants, an overarching motivator to play was the ability to play with friends. Most participants liked and valued their D&D Party. Saoirse speaks to this in saying, 72 getting to hang out with your friends and build something together is awesome. Getting to see them do creative things and getting to do creative things with them. As a GM, I like facilitating that and I love making the sandbox that people come in and play the sandbox. It's like it. It makes me so happy that people want the sandbox. The sandbox refers to a TTRPG game where a DM might give their players more than the typical amount of freedom to explore the world they have either built or are leading from another textbook source (meaning other TTRPG systems that are not D&D). This study’s participants saw creating a sandbox as a means to nurture relationships within the D&D party. As Saoirse puts it, in the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie, the party could “build something together”. Kaia, also spoke to the importance of friendship in D&D, most notably the effort of maintaining those connections outside of the game, usually before our sessions, we'd hang out before that and then we'd talk about like, how life’s been going and well, everyone's finals are midterms and whatnot, and I think like even outside, like after sessions we all get to hang out with each other and see how everyone's doing. We usually go get food and you know, check in on everyone usually do a recap of the session as well… For Genevieve, laughter is a motivator: "I think the laughter aspect of it is a big thing for me. Every time I go, I know I'm just gonna laugh my ass off at all the dumb things we do together." This speaks to the camaraderie experienced amongst players in the party, which contributed to creating a safe space for identity exploration. 73 Not only did participants describe how their party shaped their explorations of identity in positive ways, but every single participant also shared an example of a negative roleplaying experience that had halted them from being able to safely experience the world of the game, and by extension experiment with identity. For example, Kaia named an individual dubbed “the problem player” who not only made "certain individuals in our group uncomfortable, he also made choices in the game that was gonna kill everyone, essentially.” In this example, the player’s actions would have (depending on the DM’s leniency) killed all players, therefore ending the game for all involved. Silvia dubbed their version of a “problem player” as the “friend from hell” who had a previous history of bullying another player in the group during their adolescence. Silvia described the impact of that player making it "not safe to do any of the experimentation or the parts of the game that I [Silvia] actually enjoy… my worst experience with D&D, it's the person who's there for their own gain and not for the story that the people want to do.” Silvia then offered a plethora of solutions to this kind of problem player, highlighting the ease and low effort of check-ins to ensure all feel heard in a game, With the games that I play we're very good at checking in with everyone to make sure everyone's, like, feeling comfortable with what's happening. So every now and again, we'll just text in the chat and be like, hey, is everyone good if this person, you know, doesn't survive because of the choice that I'm actively about to make. Or is like anyone uncomfortable with? You know what's about to happen here? Most of the time people are not uncomfortable. They're like, "yeah, no. This is a game, we know what's happening", but again, the emotions get really high. 74 Silvia shared a couple of further examples of ways of checking in amongst players in the party. The first example was a thumbs up system (which can be used either online through emotes, or in person/ on camera with physical gestures), where a player will approach the group and describe the action they hope to play out, and then every party member gets to vote on whether or not the player can fulfil the intended action. Another system was based around emojis referencing a stoplight, for instance, red is no, yellow is maybe, and green is okay. Every group has the ability to modify the system to their liking. Other participants have safe words that wield the power of stopping gameplay all together so that the group can discuss a roleplay scenario. When systems of safety are not considered, it can create negative experiences for players. Thalia, recounted her experience being the only girl in a D&D group: There was one campaign I had where I was the only girl. And that was both in game and out of game. . . . And then. This like one like player, he started to have a crush on me and then the DM started to have a crush on me and the DM started giving my character like way too much plot armor like magic weapons and no one else was getting like a lot of focus on. My back story integrated into the plot and then everyone else in the group started to resent me and like hate on me for no reason and I just had to leave cause it's really toxic... My negative experience with D&D was probably stemming from being the only girl. Never again. Thalia’s experience highlights the fear some female players might have in being assigned the role of the ‘mom’ to an all-male party– essentially projecting patriarchal demands and 75 labours of womanhood onto her character. On the opposite side of playing in an all-male group with two fellow players crushing on her, Thalia, spoke of another experience where, "my [Thalia’s] first and second girlfriends were both my DM." When asked how her roleplay style felt during this time, Thalia said, "I think I was really nervous around them, so I would be a little bit more awkward with the NPC's, but then yes, we got a little more comfortable. I started dating then for sure I'd flirt with the NPC's. And I'd be I'd be a lot nicer to the DM, wouldn't derail so much." Participants also mentioned how sometimes the ‘problem player’ was the DM. Problematic DM play is labeled a “railroad”, a term that describes the grasp of control a DM has over their game and is the opposite of the sandbox described earlier. Oftentimes, a DM who railroads a campaign is an individual who has a clear storyline envisioned and continuously leads all player back to this storyline, preventing tangents and exploration, dismissing newly introduced improvisational story beats, and minimizing exploratory opportunities for fear they might slow or disrupt the game’s progress. Participants spoke to the destructiveness of DM’s who railroad but also accounted for the difficulty of allowing balance as a GM. For example Thalia said, the plot can get kind of sidetracked or like derailed and then it's hard to keep the narrative arc intact if you can't control what the characters are doing without like railroading them... You have to balance giving the characters enough freedom whilst also giving them a meaningful story as a DM. I think that's hard to juggle and can, yeah be a drawback in interactive media. 76 As evident above, the D&D party was an essential part of participants’ experiences and experiments with social relations – and that most often it created a non-normative community and a safe place for identity exploration, but on occasion problem players could threaten this safe space and interfere with identity explorations. 3.10.3 CHARACTER CREATION Participants in this study often drew links between how they created characters and their own explorations of identity both inside and outside the game. Characters are often a player’s entry point into the world of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, session, or one shot. The process that a player goes through in making a character is typically filled with making choices about the character’s race/species, class, stats (representing a PC’s mental and physical capabilities), and overall aesthetic. During the design phase, while not initiated by D&D’s character sheets, players are also welcome to consider their character’s gender and sexual identity as they conceptualize their backstory. Some players go into a game knowing their PC’s total identity, others leave room for opportunity to explore those traits within the bounds of the game developing these based on improvisation. Further, players may choose to develop specific costuming for their character, provide them with meaningful trinkets (or props) imbued with rich backstory, or consider the PC’s morality and alignment (law vs chaos, good vs evil). In this study, some participants described beginning their character creation process by considering outward appearance. For example, Saoirse looked deeply at his character’s clothing and/or costuming noting that, for him, "it's so revealing of who they are": 77 do they wear thrifted clothes? Because maybe that's their only option and maybe like not thrifted sorry. Like hand me downs. My apologies. Where it's like this sweater is way too big on me. And also it is very old, but like it belongs to my dad and I don't have the money to go, buy new clothes or like characters who wear huge costume jewelry. Like I love, even if it's just one thing that stands out about that character. Here Saoirse walked me through how he thinks about his character’s clothing. When designing characters, considerations like costuming tell stories of their own. How did the character acquire certain items? Why do they choose to wear them? Fleshing out a character’s clothing choices gives the player perspective into who they are, similarly to how an actor might conduct a character study it creates opportunities for experimentation and character evolution. On the topic of clothing, another participant, Kaia, shared that she also considers what she personally wears to her session. Kaia, implemented make up and went even further by choosing specific clothing options to wear in real life to D&D sessions, there have been times where I'd like, see like a shirt that, like, reminds me of [her current PC]. I'm like, OK, “I'm gonna wear this today”. So usually like, if I see like like before usually before, like getting ready to go to, to go play the session, I usually like to you know, if I see like a piece of clothing that I feel like resembles my character, then I'd be like, “well, maybe I can wear this today”… usually I would wear makeup. But then when I realized I have D&D session and usually I just feel like putting on makeup cause I feel like that would be fun, and I feel like that's very like I think it would help me kind of feel 78 more confident in that character or not more confident, I guess more in tune with the character, when I play. Rather than building a character around clothing, Genevieve, instead, opted to come across items through roleplay and "go shopping [in game] for cute little things -- like me [Genevieve] and my friend got these, like, leather bracers you could slip your dagger into and we like dyed the leather too, which was really fun." Genevieve’s methods involved chance as only the DM knows what a store has in stock within the game. Drawing on chance for Genevieve was a way for further improvisation in game. These occurrences of chance also created avenues for further role play centred around a feature such as costuming or obtaining items in game. Genevieve also described the importance of props in the form of minis— miniature D&D figures (which one can either buy pre-packed and paint or create from scratch) for combat or signalling where a character is on the game map. She also described one time making "a cute little letter thingy that I like carried around with me. It was like a letter from my mom or something and I like had this like a scroll of rolling paper with like. And I used like, a calligraphy pen." Here, she alluded to the dedication and lengths to which some players go to commit to their roleplay. In terms of character building, Silvia, brings non-traditional methods into their character creation processes, such as using the music streaming service Spotify to build a character, So what I did was I got Spotify, clicked shuffle and then added every song that came up for six songs onto a playlist and then had to build a character out of that. I had to build a 79 back story out of that, so that was very much just brought in by my love of music. Found this story through it. Silvia, spoke to the differing ways one could build a character that were not completely reliant on D&D’s character sheet prompts, like the example of using a randomized Spotify playlist. Other ways Silvia highlighted were, I think I bring a lot into my characters like everything is informed by something or informed by either something that's going on or just like an interest that I have or random character generation and not actually random character generation like I'll go on to my own Spotify playlist like play shuffle a bunch of songs, have to figure something out from there, or like go into my camera roll, scroll, click a random photo and have to make a character from that so you know things happen. In these instances Silvia described chance was a factor. It offered a prompt for their imagination to construct something out of a given circumstance. In a traditional D&D character sheet, some players opt to “point buy” referring to how a player will distribute stat points (like acrobatics, strength, performance, etc...) and have an active role in determining their character’s strengths and weaknesses. Another method players might adopt is determining their stats through luck and chance rolling for their stats. Silvia rejects these ideas of character creation and turns to other creative ways of character construction. Silvia also shared how being in a game with other queer players allowed them to experience romance options that might have otherwise not be available to them saying, 80 everyone in that game is queer in a trans sense, playing their preferred gender, trans nearly. I'm not playing a non-binary person, I would. That would be my preferred, but I am playing the male who dresses fem... So everyone's really comfortable with their gender in the game, which honestly and it might sound silly to people who don't research gender and theatre, that makes the biggest difference to any game I've ever played, is everyone is aggressively comfortable with their gender and therefore this is the game with the most romance that I've ever experienced. On the topic of romance and flirting, Genevieve shared the difference between flirting in real life versus how she approaches flirting in game, I always am a little bit more on the careful side in real life too, especially you're meeting new people, but in D&D you're just fully like, I'm just going to flirt with everybody. It's like it's a lot easier to just and like I would- I don't think I'd ever, like, go directly up to someone and tell them they were, like, cute or anything in real life. This speaks to the freedom one might experience in playing a game like D&D. While Genevieve notes that she would not be comfortable walking up to someone in real life and expressing she finds them cute or physically attractive, D&D allows Genevieve to act on those encounters and experience an outcome that does not involve a rejection or acceptance of her as a person, but rather, her character serves as a vessel for that interaction. While some players, like Genevieve, have actively chosen queer storylines as a positive way to explore identity, others 81 have had them assigned by the DM. Assigned queer character arcs were seen by some participants to be helpful to their personal explorations of gender and sexual identity. Tasha, for example, chatted with me about her positive response to such an addition of queer narratives saying, I've actually been like set up in a queer scenario where I had a romantic interest given to me, not when I pursued in a game, and I'm not necessarily a flirty person, and so I had to kind of sit there being like this is really, really enticing…Definitely working through some queer story arcs were really interesting to me and like actually kind of gave me some more confidence in the idea of exploring queer life story arcs in my real life haven't done it yet, but that's different cause my life is just too busy, but I think it's like it helped me figure out like this. For Tasha, however, assigned queer character arcs also brought a sense of discomfort. Tasha noted that the initial circumstances that brought these queer narratives were challenging as she found it, difficult to talk to my DM in that character where he was not a queer individual who was also one of my good friends who back several years ago had a crush on me and I was like, how do I flirt with this character while not flirting with my DM as someone who doesn't flirt? 82 Participants in this study, then, at times found being assigned a queer character and/or character arc beneficial to their explorations of queer identity within the game, but for others it diminished their sense of safety, and ultimately their comfort in exploring queer identities. Participants also described how sometimes queer identity exploration within D&D was accomplished by creating a series of characters over time. Saoirse recalled a moment in which he had realized a player in one of his games was experimenting with their identity in this way, I have a friend who was for the longest time convinced that they were CIS and a couple of sessions or a couple of campaigns later, it's like actually, “I kind of want to play a futch”. OK, “actually, I think I'm going to play a butch”, alright? Sure. “Actually, it's going to be a trans woman who is a futch and a Butch and etcetera, etcetera”. And eventually it's like, OK, “I think I'm going to go on testosterone”. And seeing it from the beginning, seeing that little seed, you're kind of like. Hmm. And then it keeps going. And you're like, I see you. I see what you are. And I'm here for you. And once you have realized what you are, I will celebrate with you." In this case, the player used character creation to explore their gender identity within game. Through creating a progression of characters from playing a cis-gender character, to someone who is futch (a queer person who is presented with both feminine and masculine traits), to butch (a queer person who presents more masculine, sometimes also referred to as ‘masc’), and so on, Saoirse felt able to sense his friend’s trans-identity exploration even before his friend was conscious of this choice. 83 Saoirse also recounted how he personally used character creation to explore his gender identity when playing a PC by choosing to push the boundaries of gender binaries with his character, there was a point where like I for some reason thought that I was like not a gay trans man necessarily, but like something in that zone, just with a more complex gender not that cis men... . So the character that I made at that time was… a genderless kind of, quote-un-quote, gay man kind of thing because I was like, let's see what happens here but at the same time, earlier, when I was also with that identity, that flux kind of identity zone, I also played a high femme lesbian, which was also fun… I think in a way it allowed me to access the femininity that I loved, but at the time kept myself from in some ways, I can't engage in femininity in a certain way because I want to be perceived as a, quote/unquote man, so I'll put all that into this character and that'll be great. For Saoirse, implementing and then bending character gender archetypes allowed him to play with his gender presentation in game. He described that, while now he identifies as a “gay trans man,” when he was younger, due to pre-conceived notions of queerness, he felt there were certain parts of identity he could not engage in due to the label of being trans-masc. D&D then allowed him to still engage in “feminine” constructs like playing a “high femme lesbian” while being a “gay trans man.” Saoirse went on later to explain an example of where a character exploration influenced how he presented outside of the game, noting, 84 I started not outlining a mustache, but like adding to it with like eyebrow pencil or whatever because even though it's under a mask, I know it's there. And yes, mine is coming in, but it's slow. And so the fact that I made a character who is comfortable doing that after a while, I was like, OK, I guess I can do that too. And now I love doing it and I'm very happy. Ultimately Saoirse spoke to how his characters often reflected his gender fluidity, No matter what, when I play a character like, they're always going to have some weird gender, even if I'm not like very gender or they're Demi gender. Is that a thing? I don't know. Even if I don't slap an idea or label onto it, they're always going to have some kind of question mark in that area in terms of queerness. For Saoirse, his character acted as a guiding light for the path he wanted to follow in terms of gender expression, offering a point of hopefulness; "before I was able to start my medical transition and that was really gratifying being able to play characters who either were already there or were in the midst of it usually like they're already there.” While Saoirse was able to come to a point where his in-game character influenced and aided his gender expression outside the game, he also experienced moments of gender dysphoria within his D&D experience: “although there was also a point of not pain, but like….“when will that be me?”…the character voice that I'm putting on is not the way the character sounds in my head because it's deeper than this.” Saoirse was not the only participant that played with gender in their PC character creation. Kaia shared an example of a character she played, 85 [I played] a changeling and they are like I've chosen for them to be like non-binary and go by like they/them/she/her pronouns. And that's always something that I've always like kind of thought about exploring, not necessarily like being non-binary, but more so exploring. Like the idea of having like they/them pronouns for example though it's not necessarily like who I am now, I've always kind of been open to seeing how that works out for me, like in, you know, in the near future… I want to explore like who I am as a person, not within the restrictions of a gender, and I think that's like D&D, has kept that open, has definitely like made that exploration open for me. Kaia used her character to test out a differing set of pronouns than what she typically goes by. Kaia further explained, "these characters have definitely helped me explore like what I like, who I am as a person. And who I want to become as well and as well as kind of like learning about like these characters and who they could be like attracted to.” Kaia emphasized the freedom and openness a game like D&D can offer queer players through the opportunities it creates for character creation, having experienced those benefits herself. Participants in this study explored gender and sexual identity through how they created their characters and how they then portrayed their PC’s in game. The key points that emerged from this theme yielded fruitful data that suggests participants found value in considering their PCs gender and sexual identity and in tandem, their own relationship to their identity outside of the game. 86 3.11 DISCUSSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS In chapter two, I analysed the homebrews enacted in She Kills Monsters and Dungeons and Drag Queens. Although they did so in different ways, each play demonstrated how homebrews can build time, space and playful community in which queer D&D players can explore important facets of their identity, such as gender and sexual identity. In chapter three, the six interviewees also argued that homebrew was very important to them. Self-identifying as a member of the queer community, each interviewee explained how the game afforded a means to explore their queer identity through character creation, real life costumes and in-game romance arcs. Jailyn Zabala, Josie Zvelebilova, and Alexandra To conducted an interview study titled, “‘I felt like I was them. I just didn’t know it.’: Exploring Queer Identity through TTRPG Play” (2025) where they found “the effectiveness of TTRPGs for identity exploration depends heavily on social context” (15). Zabala et al. collected data from twelve participants that were at minimum eighteen years old and had “created a character for queer exploration in any TTRPG system” (6). Ultimately, their findings suggest “that while TTRPGs can be powerful tools for identity work, their potential is best realized when both mechanical and social elements align to support queer expression” (15). This corresponds with the findings and conversations that arose concerning safety and consent procedures with the participants in this study concerning the theme of D&D Parties. Beyond the use of homebrew, interviewees emphasized the importance of safety within the D&D community and the importance of having consent systems. These arguments also resonate with the themes about consent that were raised in She Kills Monsters. In Scene two Agnes and Chuck are playing D&D when Agnes sees who she believes is her sister for the first time since her passing. Agnes goes to hug her but Chuck (through his roleplay as Tilly), prevents this and coldly states, “this is a D&D adventure, not therapy” (Nguyen 16) The 87 scene highlights the boundaries of play and the risks of transgressing them without consent. Similarly, in Dungeons and Drag Queens, at the top of the show in a kind of pre-show announcement, Paul Curry goes through the “game rules” for audiences. He notes that audience members should silence their phones and not talk randomly during the performance. He prepares the audience for acceptable interactive elements of the show, those moments when they can speak or cheer. Finally, before a legal disclaimer, he explains a foundational rule to safeguard the queer space: the audience cannot heckle the queens. This last rule is in place to protect the queens from any homophobia or transphobia in the performance and game space. It is a boundary that audiences must follow. Without such consent systems, queens risk having negative game experiences. Such clearly articulated rules build communal accountability and allow people to feel safe enough in the game that they can express and explore their minoritarian gender and sexual identities. Similarly, in the interviews conducted for this chapter, the theme D&D Parties describes how for my participants the promise to respect boundaries was an essential precursor for any successful game. In instances where their boundaries were not respected participants noted the lack of safety they felt in these occurrences impeded their exploration of gender and sexual identity in game. When the game structure supported DMs and players to establish specific boundaries and consent systems that were mindful of their needs as queer players, participants reported more positive experiences of game play and identity exploration. They were able to experience meaningful relationships within their party and experiment with identity expression through character development and story arcs. This provided a safe space for players in which they could elect to explore aspects of gender and sexual identity or not. 88 In this chapter’s interviews, I identified how all participants described having dealt with some kind of interpersonal conflict in their D&D group. For example, as noted above under the theme D&D Parties, Silvia flagged the interpersonal problems arising in their D&D group which resulted in them having "had games where they [members of their group] hate each other like a little bit. We get to play those little aspects and things". Silvia’s group draws from their real-life personal conflicts, inserting the conflicts into the gameplay to hash them out there. In She Kills Monsters, Tilly used the game to work through homophobic encounters and bullying outside the game, by implementing those experiences in her module that Agnes discovered. In contrast, many participants I interviewed shared examples of how the game itself could become an unsafe space – even a space threatening to certain expressions of identity (queer, female etc...), as a result of the game play of certain players. This suggests the value of communicating safety and accessibility needs before gameplay. When a player’s safety needs are not met, the game can become dangerous. In establishing consent and check-in systems, players have the opportunity to hold their fellow players accountable and work together to create a safe space where gender and sexual identity exploration can flourish. Another thematic connection between participants in this study and She Kills Monsters is that both centre D&D as a space of gender identity exploration where players can role play and practice coming out. Some interviewees described deliberately engaging in queer narratives in the game to think about their identity outside the game. Silvia expressed this most clearly when they stated, "D&D, even outside of the character creation, is the entire reason I was able to come out". Just as Tilly used a D&D module to come out in She Kills Monsters, Silvia was able to learn about themselves through their gameplay that then led to the discovery that they are queer. Some folks used the game itself as a method of exploring their identity before transitioning those 89 findings into the real world. For example, returning to Shepherd’s MA thesis, in their chapter two, Shepherd shares the story of one of their participants, Xavier who identified “as a non-binary, transmasculine demi-boy” (33). At the time of Shepherd’s study, Xavier used they/them, he/him pronouns, but in Xavier’s online life experimented with neo-pronouns/ identities for example, “ae/aem/aer as” pronouns. While DMing and role playing as an interactive NPC Shepherd intentionally misgendered Xavier’s character, Ziph Huma (58). In this exchange, Shepherd was role playing as a librarian named Ms. Hutson (57) who was meeting Ziph for the first time. Ms. Hutson was not privy to Ziph’s preferred pronouns and upon misidentifying Ziph, made an immediate effort to correct it. Shepherd, in an interview with Xavier after the incident, reported that, “these interactions made them [Xavier] not only feel comfortable in creating a character who was non-binary and autistic, but they specifically said that these interactions made them feel as if this fictional world was a space in which they as a real person could explore their own identity through Ziph’s navigation of this space” (58). Using Shepherd’s research as an example highlights how a participant, Xavier, made a conscious effort to explore their gender identity and how minor conflicts helped them learn to problem solve other character’s interruptions to their gender expression. In their effort, they received immediate feedback from their DM that allowed them to solidify what their character’s pronouns were. They later found encouragement through that experience that could potentially be translated into reality. Through the six interviews I conducted, I learned a great deal about what drew queer D&D players to the game. I also learned about the kinds of play they enjoyed and the kind they avoided. All the interviewees had experienced game environments wherein they felt disrespected or unsafe. While in the example, of Xavier, the conflicted was able to be resolved, that is not always the case for players. Depending on the intention behind, moments such as players actively choosing 90 to misgender others can halt gender exploration altogether stopping any utopic blueprints from developing. In the varying cases of the participants in this study, even after challenging negative experiences all continued to want to play, however, but under more specific conditions. Each described homebrews and careful boundary setting by the players as essential features of the kind of D&D play they pursued. In correspondence to Dungeons and Drag Queens, David Waldron’s idea (discussed in chapter one) of players persona playing relates to how Genevieve shared with me that she "can never not bring my [Genevieve] own identity into it" referring to her character creation processes and how her roleplay choices are "normally always subconsciously based on things I [Genevieve] do." On the other hand, in persona playing, my participants expressed how there is movement for players to experience persona experimentation. For instance, this allows them to narrow down specific points of their identities they wish to explore, just as Xavier did with neo-pronouns in the above example. Another connection between the plays studied and the interviews comes from Dungeons and Drag Queens, as the queens play as their dragsonas, being a variation of persona playing. Similarly, Tilly in She Kills Monsters engages in a form of persona playing as she expresses her sexual identity in New Landia freely. In this sense, the participants of this study, Tilly, and the queens in Dungeons and Drag Queens are practicing Muñoz’s queer utopian blueprints introduced in chapter 1. Developing PCs that resemble themselves serve to allow a rehearsal of gender and sexual identity. These explorations that occur in game are effectively blueprints that players can turn to in reality. An example of this is Kaia’s decision to choose clothing that resembled her PC which she would physically wear to her sessions. Kaia described her act of dressing up as an effort in further accessing her current PC. Similarly, in She Kills Monsters, scene seven, Agnes stole Vera’s black leather gloves to use 91 as a costuming piece saying, “I think they’ll help me stay in character...” (Nguyen 39). Like Agnes, in costuming herself, Kaia noted how it would help her feel confident entering her session. Similarly to how Saoirse experimented with drawing a mustache on himself. In game, players can choose whether or not they want to explore certain aspects of their identity just as in real life players can implement any identity exploration. In my interviews, Saoirse highlighted Muñoz’s blueprints from the perspective of a DM/GM. Saoirse talked about how the role of DM allows one to curate a sandbox for players. The sandbox carries the potential to become a queer utopian blueprint. Due to a sandboxes’ ability to foster improvisation it creates a unique opportunity for the group to engage in what Ruberg considers queer world building. The opposite of this however, occurs when the DM chooses to railroad their session which might halt some explorations and blueprints from developing. In the absence of railroading and other problem players these blueprints offer rich opportunities for players to engage in queer utopian worlds through their commitment to roleplay. Participants in this study noted that they preferred more dynamic roleplay in their games. The blueprints a group draws rely on the levels of engagement of the party. The more invested players are in their game, the more likely these explorations they embark on could be transmitted into the real world relating to what Kemper considers as an “emancipatory bleed” (1). 3.12 LIMITATIONS Due to the nature of recruitment, this study was conducted with participants who are active in post-secondary institutions and theatrical communities therefore it necessarily leaves out perspectives or players with less education and theatrical experience. Furthermore, this study was also limited by the need for interviewees to be comfortable with Zoom interviews and have 92 access to the technology to engage in them. While my own position as a longstanding D&D player and queer-identifying researcher provides many benefits, it also may limit my ability to perceive the game, the performances and the interview data from different perspectives. To account for this, I practice ongoing reflectivity throughout the research process. This study engaged with a small number of participants from the 18-30 year old category. A future rendition of this study could benefit from perspectives outside this current scope. 3.13 INTERVIEW ANALYSIS CONCLUSIONS The research data shared in this chapter was gathered in response to this study’s overarching research question: how do D&D players, aged 18 to 30-years-old, who identify on the queer spectrum, understand and experience the relationship between their character creations and theatrical choices during D&D gameplay, and their identity, especially related to gender and sexual identity, outside the game? Through interviews with the six study participants, I learned that the majority of players welcome identity exploration in their games. Using Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s 2022 reflexive thematic analysis, I carefully coded the interview responses. This allowed me to identify three primary themes that help to explain how identity exploration can occur in D&D. I organized the chapter around these three themes. The first concerned the player’s context for playing D&D, the second considered the role of D&D Parties, and the last centered on the interviewees specific practices of Character Creation. Exploring the data related to the first theme, Dungeons and Dragons: Player Context, I shared examples of how participants understand the mechanics of D&D and how they use those understandings to either embrace the game’s predetermined mechanics or challenge them by adding homebrew. Further, I shared examples of the many instances in which interviewees 93 provided personal context about their non-D&D-specific familiarity and experience with fantasy, fiction, theatre and gaming. Interviewees shared how they believe such past experiences shape their D&D gameplay. This attention to the individual player’s context surrounding the game helped to explain why they sought to participate in the D&D gameplay and the ways in which prior familiarity with fantasy, fiction and/or theatre shaped gameplay and expectations. The second theme, which I had not anticipated but that surface clearly through analysis, was the importance of D&D Parties. These are the respective groups with which the interviewees played D&D. The group participants adventured with played a large role in determining how safe and accessible the game was for them to explore constructs like gender and sexual identity. In this theme, I shared specific examples from the interviewees in which explained what factors rendered the play hospitable and inhospitable for gender and sexual identity exploration and/or expression. For the experience to be generative, all interviewees cited the need for strong, safe boundaries and a culture of consent. Interviewees identified how the D&D party could set boundaries and contexts for more dynamic roleplay to occur. In such contexts, interviewees reported, it was easier for them to access their character and be vulnerable in game. They also showed how inhibiting the absence of a safe D&D party community can be, preventing players from exploring gender and sexual identity. The last major theme that surfaced across the interview data, Character Creation, concerned the players’ practices in developing their PCs. All interviewees were clearly very thoughtful about this process. They each shared details about how they built a character in advance of play but also allowed for moments of exploration and discovery to arise naturally throughout gameplay, particularly with regard to the character’s gender and sexual identity. The interviewees shared details about how they had navigated queer narrative arcs and queer in-game 94 flirting. One interviewee shared a narrative about how transness in the character creation seemed to have influenced and supported a specific player’s emerging trans identity outside the game. Thinking about these themes in the context of the broader literature on this topic, I am struck by how all three of the themes resonate with an aspect of Coe’s 2017 study, "Why people play table-top role-playing games: A grounded theory of becoming as motivation". Coe identified “Creative Curiosity” as a primary motivator for play (2856). He summarizes his codes under the umbrella of “Creative Curiosity” as, “finding creative freedom,” “imaginative curiosity,” and “TRPG as creating” (2852) Arguably, all of the homebrew activities described by the interviewees in my study required players to engage in an active practice of creative curiosity. All the interviewees spoke to the escapism and creativity D&D offers as a form of interactive media. In a player's act of engaging with homebrew, they create and become co-conspirators in the making of the world in which they will play. If their homebrew creations establish and abide by rules of play which make them feel safe and respected, then the game also supports the player’s creative curiosity and capacity to explore gender, and sexual identity. The interviewees responses resonate with the homebrews and gameplay explored in my first chapter. In She Kills Monsters, Tilly is the only active agent creating New Landia. Curious to know what it would be like to exist with Lilly/ Lilith unapologetically, she creates New Landia as a safe space in which to express her queerness. In Dungeons and Drag Queens, the performers’ act of using their preestablished dragsonas gives them the creative freedom to exist in a new landscape facilitated by D&D and use their creative liberty to wreak havoc (should they choose). As Coe argued, D&D homebrews offer Tilly, the queens and all the research subjects I was able to interview powerful means to support “creative curiosity” and queer identity formation and expression. In this chapter, my interviews confirmed that players found value in engaging with topics like 95 gender and sexual identity using roleplay as a vessel for exploration. This came up through how the participants use their understanding of the games mechanics, who they play the game with, and how they create characters for gameplay. 96 Chapter 4: Conclusion Through this research, I turned to performances and participant interviews to consider the theatrical elements within Dungeons and Dragons to further understand its allure to queer players. I learnt how young queer D&D players implement homebrew into their games to explore identity having arrived at my enquiry in part from my longtime familiarity with the game as a player and by approaching the research from a theatre and performance studies perspective. Chapter one provided basic context for understanding the game’s origins, broad cultural uptake and openness to imaginative homebrew approaches. For my purposes here, I have been focused on homebrews which allowed space for queer-identifying players and characters. Informed by theorists Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz and others, I understood the relevance of theatre and performance to gender performativity and queer identity and expression. Muñoz prompted me to consider D&D homebrews as means through which queer people might be able to find relief from heteronormativity and hopeful joy in imaginative play, creating blueprints for queer inclusive futures. For examples of what that might look like, I looked first at contemporary plays and stage performances which centered around D&D gameplay and queer identity. In chapter two, I analysed Qui Nguyen’s play She Kills Monsters as well as two performances that I attended of the touring show Dungeons and Drag Queens. These and other examples demonstrated that the game’s connection with queer cultures has already been identified and explored artistically in the public sphere. I showed how the explorations of D&D in She Kills Monsters demonstrate the generative possibilities that homebrew games can hold for young, queer players and their communities. The game was a safe, creatively engaging space in which Tilly could work though her experiences of being bullied and express her queer identity. Likewise, Dungeons and Drag Queens demonstrated how a homebrew could create a highly 97 engaging public space in which the drag queens could be creative and play relatively safely. Further, the pre-game rules set by DM Paul Curry demonstrated how DMs can make spaces safer by explicitly creating rules and boundaries aimed at safeguarding the players and their queer identities. Both She Kills Monsters and Dungeons and Drag Queens feature queer positive D&D gameplay that generates hope akin to that which Muñoz locates in other blueprints for queer, utopic, futurity. For Tilly Evans in She Kills Monsters, the blueprint is the game module located in her fictional realm of New Landia, a homebrewed space of Tilly’s design in which she grapples with her sexual identity. The homebrew feature of inserting drag queens into the Dungeons and Dragons game can create public space in which to explore more inclusive drag aesthetics than those championed by such mainstream arbiters as RuPaul’s Drag Race. Where the latter has privileged “realness”, DNDQ finds new ways to value what has in the past been devalued as monstrous or insufficiently “real”. In chapter three, I shared key themes from the data I collected following six interviews with queer young adult D&D players. My questions aimed to understand how D&D players understand and experience the relationship between their character creation and theatrical choices within the game, and their identity (especially related to gender and sexual identity) outside the game. The three themes which surfaced emphasized the creative potential of the game and the high value interviewees place on homebrews, D&D parties, rules for consent that create safe gameplaying environments and character construction. In many instances D&D gameplay offered blueprints for queer, utopic futurities to the players interviewed. Applying a theatrical lens allowed me to identify how costuming, props, improvisation, party relationships, character creation, and queer story arcs contributed to the development of such blueprints. 98 However, the interviews also identified that problem players, railroading DM/GMs, uncomfortable flirting, and being assigned (versus choosing) queer story arcs were all instances that threatened utopian blueprints for the participants I interviewed. While I am not the first to study identity in relation to D&D, my study builds from a theatre and performance studies perspective. This allows me to analyse plays and performances which feature queer D&D gameplay. It also helps me to recognize the theatrical and performance elements imbricated into D&D gameplay. D&D creates a safe space within a broader culture of heteronormativity in which players can, in a relatively safe and low stakes environment, engage creatively in identity exploration and/or rehearsal. Research in this field offers valuable considerations to collaborative storytelling through improvisation, character creation and character work such as learning how a player might access their character, navigating worlds that are of not our own, and understanding how interactive game performance can be staged. Concerning this study's limitations, this study was conducted with recruitment aid from the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Theatre and Film department resulting in D&D players who had already strong theatrical backgrounds. I recommend future studies consider participants with no prior theatrical training or a lack of theatrical exposure to examine how other players might embrace or deny adding theatrical flares to their gameplay. She Kills Monsters and Dungeons and Drag Queens are but two examples of a growing number of productions that are centering D&D on stage. Consider, for example, the recent off-Broadway hit, The Twenty-Sided Tavern or Dimension 20’s Gauntlet at the Garden – a live show performed at a sold-out Madison Square Garden on Jan 24, 2025. As the game takes up more space in public performance spheres, it is useful to be mindful of how the game can best serve the need of queer players and the queer futurities that Muñoz theorizes. Dungeons and Dragons 99 offers refuge in optimism and with appropriate measures of safety and accessibility can be a fruitful and fun space for queer nerds to dream big and explore their identities at their leisure beyond the harmful stigmas and discriminatory actions of the real world. 100 Bibliography Anderson, Katie. "Dungeons & Dragons: Fractals of the Human Self." Honours Thesis, University of Richmond, 2023. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/1675. Bailey, Marlon. Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit. University of Michigan Press, 2013. 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"I felt like I was them. I just didn't know it.": Exploring Queer Identity through TTRPG Play." Conference Proceedings of DiGRA 2025: Games at the Crossroads. 2025. “Zoom Conferencing in Research”, April 22, 2022, Office of Research Ethics, VP Research & Innovation, The University of British Columbia, https://researchethics.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/documents/Zoom%20Guidance.pdf. 105 Appendices Appendix A Information and Consent Form Research Study Title: Role for Initiative: Roll Playing & Playing a Role- Queer Representations in D&D Principal Investigator: Dr. Kirsty Johnston, PhD. Department Head, Professor, Department of Theatre Studies University of British Columbia Co-Investigators: Dr. Julia Henderson, PhD, Reg. OT(BC) Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy University of British Columbia Kayla McIntyre, BA, Graduate Student (MA) in the Department of Theatre & Film Studies University of British Columbia Who is Conducting the Study? This study is being conducted by researchers from the University of British Columbia, as a part of Kayla McIntyre’s graduate master’s thesis project. Project Purpose and Procedures This study is to understand both personal history and character creation in playing games. The research team will be doing interviews with contributors to understand personal stories and experiences in playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). This study will be looking at how one creates a character and how that effects to the overall gameplay. As gaming is a rising topic within Theatre and Performance Studies, by taking part in this study you will be able to share your experiences playing Dungeons and Dragons and add to current research. When will the study take place? This study will take place between January 2025 to January 2026. You are only required to be available for one one-hour interview time and a two-hour focus group session. Both of these will be scheduled at your convenience. Participant Inclusion Material An ideal fit for this study is a participant who meets the following criteria: they are between the ages of 18-30 (classified as young adults), they identify on the queer spectrum, they have experience playing Dungeons & Dragons, speak English (in order to participate collaboratively in group activities), and are able to provide informed consent. What does the study involve? Individual Interview: This study involves participating in one approximately 60-minute virtual (via Zoom) interview, which will be in a private location of your choice. You will be asked to answer a series of questions concerning your experience roleplaying as certain characters and to reflect on the relationship between your avatars’ explorations of queerness and identity. 106 Focus Group: Additionally, each participant will be invited to attend a focus group session for two hours to evaluate the thematic findings of the study and encourage reflections on data accuracy. This will additionally allow the participant to add or redact statements previously made, should they choose or feel it necessary. The scheduling of this event will be reflective of the participants’ reported schedules. As the focus group will be conducted in a group setting in a Zoom room, there is a potential loss of confidentiality because researchers cannot control what other participants do with the information that is discussed, or what names the participants use in the room. As confidentiality cannot be guaranteed in this setting, participants are welcome to use a pseudonym or nickname. What will happen with the information (on Zoom)?: Investigators will use the UBC-licensed version of Zoom. Meeting links will be sent directly to the participant via email, there will be a waiting room that participants will remain in so the research team can monitor those who have access to the room. All control and host functions will be limited to the research team, once the meeting commences the room will be locked to prevent anyone else from joining. We will only be recording the video as an additional backup audio sample for the research team. Those who wish to not be identified may choose to use an alternate name in their log-in ID. When the interview commences, participants will be notified when the recording is activated. Using Zoom's recording software, we will record the video and audio of each individual interview and the larger focus group meeting upon receiving each participant’s consent to record. Additionally using UBC's OneDrive built-in transcription feature we will password-protect the contents of each meeting and upload them safely. Audio and video recordings, transcripts of recordings, and consent forms will be encrypted and stored on UBC’s OneDrive. Dr. Kirsty Johnston will be responsible for retaining the data, which will be stored for a minimum of 5 years after the study findings have been published. After this time period, the data will be securely destroyed, following UBC protocols. Data will be held in Dr. Kirsty Johnston's research office at the UBC Department of Theatre and Film. Any hard copies will be stored in a locked filing cabinet in a locked office, and the electronic data in an encrypted folder on a secure server, using a password-protected computer in a locked office. How will the results be shared?: The results of this study will be shared through Kayla McIntyre’s graduate master’s thesis. Additionally, findings from this study will be shared through written reports and presentations for academics, students, conferences, and journals. Results may appear in “open access” journals or websites that are broadly available to the public. Open access journals may require researchers to make their data accessible in a research repository (for other research purposes). Open access is the process of making published academic articles freely and permanently available online. Anyone, anywhere can read and build upon this research. All identifiable features of participants identities will be removed such as names and identifying descriptions. This does not increase participant risk. Please note however, once the data is published and made available, participants will not be able to withdraw their data. Additionally, a summary of the study results will be provided to all participants. Are there any potential risks to participating? 107 While there is the possibility that discussing aspects of identity could be upsetting, there are no anticipated risks involved in taking part in this study outside of what people might encounter in daily life. Should any concerns arise please let an investigator know. Will being in the study help you? You will have a chance to contribute to current research by offering your unique insights into identity and gaming. How will your Confidentiality be protected? We will not give information that identifies you to anyone without your permission. We will collect information from you through one interview approximately 1-hour in length, that will be recorded using Zoom’s software that allows its users to record meeting video and audio locally to a singular computer. Audio will be transcribed verbatim (word for word) using Zoom’s recording and in software transcription service and stored on the researcher’s computer. All digital materials will be encrypted with a password and temporarily stored for analysis. Quotations from these interviews will not include your name unless you wish to be identified. To further preserve your identity, when joining the Zoom interview you may wish to log in using a pseudonym or nickname while additionally having your camera turned off. Identifiable participant information will be password encrypted and stored separately from the de-identified interview transcripts and focus group data. Who can you contact if you have questions about the study? If you have any questions or require further information about the project you may contact Kayla McIntyre. Who can you contact if you have concerns or complaints about the study? If you have any concerns or complaints about your rights as a research participant and/or your experiences while participating in this study, contact the Research Participant Complaint Line in the UBC Office of Research Ethics at 604-822-8598 or if long distance e-mail RSIL@ors.ubc.ca or call toll free 1-877- 822-8598. Consent Taking part in this study is entirely up to you. You have the right to refuse to participate in this study. If you decide to take part, you may choose to pull out of the study at any time without giving a reason and without any negative impact. Do you allow the research team record both audio and video during the interview and focus group meeting? Please select either “Yes” or “No”. [ ] Yes [ ] No Your signature below indicates that you have received a copy of this consent form for your own records. 108 Your signature indicates that you consent to participate in this study and to the research team recording both the interview and focus group meeting. ____________________________________________________________________________ Participant Signature Date ____________________________________________________ Printed Name of the Participant 109 Appendix B Recruitment Poster 110 Appendix C Demographic Data Form Demographic Data Form Please answer the following questions to the best of your ability and comfortability: 1. What is your gender identity? 2. What are your preferred pronouns? 3. What is your sexuality? 4. What is your age? 5. What is your ethnicity? 6. What is your educational background? (Highest level of education) 7. What is your profession? 8. What is your economic status/ class? 9. How long have you been playing D&D? 10. Do you play any other TTRPGs? 11. If yes, how long have you been playing TTRPGs? 12. Do you have a preference between D&D and other TTRPGs? 13. Do you play virtually or in person? 14. Do you have a preference? If so, could you explain why? 111 15. What is the scope of your theatre knowledge? 16. Have you had any experience with theatre? Once completed, please send the form to: Kayla McIntyre. 112 Appendix D Sample Questions Sample Focus Group Example Questions: These will be determined from the themes that arise from the individual interviews. Performance - What performative aspects of D&D do you enjoy most? - How would you relate or reject D&D or other RPGs to live theatre? - How are your improvisational offers received in the game? - What elements of performance do you embody when playing? Some examples are voice work (developing a character voice, specific costuming- have you ever dressed up as your characters, using technology to enhance gameplay- such sound effects or miniatures, etc.)? Narrative - Do you find inspiration from your reality enhances your roleplay? Or does it lessen the experience? - What are the benefits or drawbacks of choosing an interactive medium to tell stories? - Do you find yourself exploring similar themes to previous gameplay within a campaign? - What similarities or differences to other narratives have you explored in your own campaigns? Character Creation - Would anyone like to share a character they created? - How did you go through the character making process? o Does anyone else have a similar process or one that differs? Identity - Can you identify a time where you felt your character related to your own identity? - What features or traits of your personal identity do you flourish, reject or add during the character creation process? - Can you name an experience where D&D reframed how you experienced the world? Have you experienced any benefits of playing D&D? Can anyone else relate? Prompting Questions: - Could you tell me more? o Could you tell me more about ____? - Could you speak more on _____? - Would someone like to speak on that point?
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Theatre
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Johnston, Kirsty, 1971-
Henderson, Julia
Roll for initiative : role playing & playing a role — queer representations in D&D
Text