Dungeons & Dragons at 50: How a fantasy world can be a home for everyone

It's a world of powerful heroes and terrifying beasts, and the only limit is your imagination.

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) just celebrated its 50th anniversary as a fantasy role-playing game, but that doesn't mean it's stuck in the past.

It has grown significantly in popularity online during the pandemic and now has an estimated 50 million participants.

Hollywood is also getting in on the action with its own D&D club run by Magic Mike star Joe Manganiello.

But as more people join, efforts are being made by some to shape its future to make it a more inclusive space.

One group of adventurers hoping to change the way we view games are Jeremy Cobb, Liv Kennedy, and Jasper William Cartwright, known on their podcast as “The Three Black Halflings.”

In addition to playing games, their show also focuses on the intersection of D&D and black culture.

“Representation is really important to make something feel accessible,” Jasper told BBC Newsbeat.

“People like us have shown others that there are places within those spaces that brown people typically don’t look at.”

Three Black Halflings states on their podcast and in most of the worlds they create that all of their characters are black, even if the person playing them is not.

The presenters said this reflects some of the biases seen in traditional D&D and fantasy storylines, which tend to be based on Tolkien's more Eurocentric vision of the fantasy world of The Lord of the Rings. He says it's to challenge himself.

In the series, entire races can become aggressive and savage, which Jasper says reflects past racist views.

He feels that the podcast has helped him feel more confident and discover new parts of his identity as a person of mixed heritage.

“A big part of it was feeling like I wasn’t in touch with the black half of my heritage.

“I'm now able to really think about who I am and embrace all the sides of myself that I didn't express because I felt a little bit embarrassed, because I'm not black enough. “I felt like I didn’t have it,” he says.

Wizards of the Coast, the company that developed D&D, has largely removed these traditional biases, no longer defining whether a character is good or evil based on their race, which Jasper says makes the game “more interesting and more interesting. It got exciting.”

However, controversy has recently arisen.

In 2022, the company apologizes and all material undergoes a series of inclusivity checks after one story included a race of sentient enslaved apes that was criticized as racist. announced.

Ideas about race aren't the only thing D&D encourages some players to explore.

Liv feels that gaming has become a safe space for queer people like her to use as a place to explore both their sexual orientation and gender identity.

In the game, there are no restrictions on the gender of the characters or how they can be identified.

“It really helped me recognize that side of myself. It was really liberating to know what felt good,” she says.

Jeremy believes the response to D&D has definitely changed, with people becoming more open to the idea of ​​the game, even if they've never played it themselves.

That has a lot to do with it appearing more in popular culture, he says.

“We've seen changes similar to what happened to superheroes.

“In the early 2000s, it was still kind of uncool to be into superheroes. Most people didn't know who Iron Man was.

“But in 2008 and 2009 they got really famous and suddenly it became cool to like superheroes,” he says.

YouTube and various streaming services offer shows specifically based on D&D stories, such as Amazon Prime's The Legend of Vox Makina and Critical role.

The Dungeons & Dragons movie starring Chris Pine also received generally positive reviews.

And in the gaming world, Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year at the 2023 Game Awards. This exceeded expectations for a game based entirely on D&D mechanics.

The growing popularity of D&D is big business for shops like The Traveling Man in Manchester.

Although the game is played almost entirely by your imagination, there are plenty of elements that new players and die-hard fans can invest in.

This includes a book with pre-written quests, small figures representing characters, and lots of dice. The most important is the D20 (the name for the 20-sided die), which is used to generate random outcomes in the game. .

Jake, who works at the store, says he sees “people of all ages and walks of life” coming in, and interest in D&D is growing.

“It's great to see people getting involved in something that wasn't as exciting when we first started,” he says.

He feels that new people who come to the shop will also come back to expand the collection. That includes fans who Jake describes as “psycho-rogoblins” who collect particularly colorful and interesting sets.

When Jake isn't working, he plays his own game of D&D, where quests feature clerics from the Realm of Light.

“She is the sister of Selune, the moon god. Her role is to keep the party alive and drive away the immortal creatures.”

Looking to the future, Jake hopes to see D&D continue to grow.

“I would love to see it expand into space and delve into the multiverse.

“A campaign where you encounter different versions of your character. That would be fun to see,” he says.