Over the last year or so, a huge spike in popularity for tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) has been seen around the world. Games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), Pathfinder, and Cyberpunk 2020 have experienced a massive boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, as these games are easily suitable for virtual play: all you need are character sheets, a pencil, dice, and Zoom to go on an adventure with your friends around the world and escape reality for a few hours.

I, too, have fallen victim to the rising popularity of TTRPGs. I’ve always been a gamer (both tabletop and video games), but games like D&D never appealed to me. But after seeing some actual play content online and talking with friends who were more experienced, I find myself not only playing D&D but also running games for my friends (for those that don’t know, D&D requires a dungeon master—or DM—to set the story, act as the nonplayer characters, and create scenarios and combats for the player characters to navigate).

And the obsession is real.

My dice collection has grown. The number of books I own (both print and digital) is astounding. I’ve built two dice boxes from scratch, and my partner got me a custom-made DM screen for my birthday. I have multiple group chats dedicated to D&D, and—if I’m with the right group of friends—the topic will turn to D&D at some point.

I love it. So why did I refuse to play for so long?

Representation in high fantasy

I was admittedly a nerd growing up. As a 90s and early-2000s child, one of those obsessions—for a time—was Harry Potter. I was enamored with the books in middle school, but quickly found myself losing interest in high school. I also tried to get into Lord of the Rings, but after reading 50 pages of The Hobbit and watching the first movie, I realized it wasn’t for me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve come to learn that the reason for this is that very few (if any) characters in these books were like me.

I am Mexican, and when watching these movies, I mostly saw white faces. While I wanted to be a Hogwarts student or a member of the Fellowship so badly, there were no characters that looked like me to make me feel like I belonged.

Luckily, more and more people are calling out this lack of diversity in the fantasy genre. Writers and content creators are showing the lack of diversity in Harry Potter and other fantasy franchises and how it becomes harder for people of color, queer people, people with disabilities, and more to connect with the stories and characters portrayed in these books and movies. 

And I, when I was younger, heard the title Dungeons & Dragons and thought, Oh, this is some high-fantasy that’s not meant for me. So I avoided the game adamantly, even though the thought of maybe trying it was always in the back of my mind.

The internet’s a magical place

Luckily, in the last few years, an influx of actual-play D&D content has become huge online. “Actual-play content” refers to videos or podcasts of real people playing D&D and other roleplaying games in real time, showing viewers what it’s like to sit at a table and engage with the game and its mechanics.

Shows like Dimension 20 and Critical Role and podcasts like Not Another D&D Podcast are showing the real fun one can have when engaging with roleplaying games. And many of this content shows that anyone can play D&D and that D&D can be reworked to be more welcoming to everyone.

Stars like Lou Wilson, Aabria Iyengar, and Erika Ishii are showing the world that players of different races, sexualities, gender identities, and more are welcome at roleplaying tables. And the producers of these shows are not only allowing them to be at the table, but making space in their worlds for these players and the characters that are representative of their own identities.

The beauty of reskins

Only a base-level of fantasy of mythology will show you that D&D and other fantasy RPGs usually have a strict setting. Handbooks, modules, and other source materials use mostly European fantasy to create their worlds: from Norse mythology, we get dwarves and elves; from Celtic mythology, we get banshees; and we get minotaurs and gorgons from Greek mythology. These are very easy to find and incorporate into the average D&D campaign.

But the fact of the matter is this: D&D and other roleplaying games, along with their characters, components, enemies, and more are merely just a set of statistics and mechanics.

If you’re running a campaign with Mesoamerican elements, who is to say that you can’t treat the stats of a lion as those of a jaguar?

The act of renaming the stats for a creature, character, or other component is called “reskinning.” Basically, you’re using the same mechanics and structure for the component but just calling it something else and maybe altering the stats a little bit to make it fit better in your world.

Here’s an example in my own D&D playing: My character, Coyotl, is an Aztec jaguar warrior. He goes to war for his god, and, in return, his god has granted him special powers. In D&D terms, Coyotl is a cleric: he uses divine magic to fight for his god (yes, D&D nerds: I know he might be better suited as a paladin, but I like cleric spells better, okay?). Since his god is a god of the sun, Coyotl is a light domain cleric.

He wields a macuahuitl, a pre-Columbian weapon that looks like a cricket bat with sharp obsidian blades lining the sides. All I did was take the stats of a longsword and rename it to “macuahuitl” on my character sheet. It still does slashing damage based on Coyotl’s strength like a typical longsword in D&D; it just has a different name.

You can reskin anything you want. You can even reskin entire campaigns. Dimension 20 is great at this: I highly recommend watching The Unsleeping City to see an example of this, as the campaign takes place in modern-day New York City. In fact, I’m “borrowing” (i.e., “blatantly stealing”) this idea for the next D&D campaign I’m planning for my friends, setting it in modern-day Detroit. (Maybe I can write about that experience someday. Is that something you’d want to read? Let me know in the comments!)

RPGs are for everyone

Not only can D&D and other games be reskinned to fit any setting or characters you have in mind, there are plenty of games on the market that are created by and predominately feature people of color in their main settings. I personally own Nahual and Coyote & Crow and can’t wait to get them to the table with my friends.

Whether you’re choosing D&D or a different game, remember that everyone should be welcome at your table. And it takes only a little effort to make sure all players feel not only welcomed but included in the world you are creating. Many seasoned DMs have great tips on how to make your games more inclusive, and these tips from Master the Dungeon are a great place to start.

The most important tip? Talk to your players. Learn what they are looking for and help them incorporate their culture, history, and more into your game. (Shoutout to my first-ever DM Sean Spence at Words About Shapes for helping me bring Coyotl to life in a D&D setting.) Not only will this make more players feel welcome, but it will give you some cool new worlds, mythologies, and characters to make your world more unique and more inclusive of everyone at your table—and make your game more fun.

And that’s what RPGs are about: having fun with your friends with nothing more than some character sheets, pencils, and dice.