Duane has been cultivating Hammer Gaming, a community for like-minded players who wish to avoid the toxicity that is often found in online games. He speaks about consulting with other gamemasters like myself, and we talk through an example of how we collaborated to flesh out various characters in my Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Duane then delves into his experiences as a person of color playing video- and tabletop games, and the obstacles he has encountered over the years while trying to engage with the hobby. Here is a brief segment of this discussion:
I’m a person of color and… finding groups of gamers that are diverse continues to be a challenge. It can be very difficult to find other folks who look like me. And that’s not a huge problem; I’ll play with whoever wants to pull up to the table. It would be nice to have a bit more diversity in gaming. And I’ve encountered that on both ends – both as someone who helps run a community and have new gamers come to us, and as someone who goes to conventions and wants to sit down at tables with strangers and play games with them. It doesn’t happen very often but every now and then – I’ll get a funny look. Like, “Oh, hey, don’t see people like you very much at the table.” And I just shrug and play, because I’m there to play…
The representation problem isn’t just at the tables. It’s also in the content. I have a very difficult time finding folks who look like me or who represent stories outside of the Western European norm in the content published by tabletop RPG creators… To quote Avery Brooks who played Ben Sisko on DS9, “It is very important that brown children and brown people in general can see people who look like them in contemporary mythology.” And I really hope more effort is made… In addition to being at the table, it really needs to start showing up in the content. And I think it’s not going to start showing up in the content until more creators like Quinn [Murphy] are employed by the publishers or contracted by the publishers and say, “Hey, look. We need to tell these kind of stories. Let’s go ahead and hire the people that can tell them.”
He offers advice for other players and content creators to make gaming a safer space for a wider audience. He details how Hammer Gaming came to be created, and how it has evolved from a World of Warcraft guild to a vibrant community of 40-50 friendly gamers. We close the show by talking about Destiny 2, and he tries to convince me to dive in when it releases for PC.
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